When a heart attack begins, a stopwatch starts With each passing minute heart tissue is deprived of blood, causing it to deteriorate or die In order to minimize damage to the heart, blood flow must be restored promptly, or the effects can be serious, often even fatal Research shows that the length of time between when a heart attack starts and when treatment begins is fundamental to improving survival rates; so what if an alarm sounded at the onset of a heart attack signaling the immediate need for medical attention?
Archive for April, 2011
Animal-assisted therapy reduces anxiety in patients undergoing MRI: Study
Patients who undergo MRI often suffer from elevated anxiety. Patient discomfort may cause poor image quality due to motion artifacts or early termination. Anxiolytic medications are currently used to reduce this anticipated anxiety , but animal-assisted therapy may be a non-invasive alternative treatment with fewer adverse effects, according to an exhibit being presented at the 2011 American Roentgen Ray Society’s annual meeting.
The project was conceived by a fifteen-year-old high student Allison Ruchman. During the course of her MRI, she experienced anxiety and claustrophobia. She relieved her tension by creating a mental picture of her dog, Wally, and believed that her experience could be applicable to other patients who often need anti-anxiety drugs in order to complete the examination.
Surreptitious sleep states uncovered
The closed eyes, the unresponsiveness, the drool — sleep is an easily recognizable, all-encompassing state. But the divide between sleep and wakefulness may not be as clearcut as we thought.
Research published today in Nature demonstrates that in visibly awake rats, neurons in some areas of the brain’s cortex briefly go ‘offline’. In these pockets, neuronal patterns resemble those associated with non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.
“The rats were awake, but awake with a nice sprinkling of localized sleep in the cortex,” says Guilio Tononi, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and lead author of the study.
The team used different techniques to measure both the local and global electric field potentials in the brain. Loc
Komen grant of $450,000 awarded to Providence Cancer Center for cell study of breast cancer
Providence Cancer Center researcher Michael Gough has received a Career Catalyst Research Grant of $450,000 over three years from Susan G. Komen for the Cure to study the possibility of ending metastatic cancer. Despite advances in all treatment for breast cancer, metastatic disease the spread of cancer to other parts of the body remains the ultimate challenge. Dr. Gough’s work explores how the human immune system protects and supports cancer cell growth following cytotoxic therapies such as radiation and chemotherapy, according to a press release from Providence. Cells not killed during treatment have the potential to move to other parts of the body. The grant will be used to study how to redirect immune processes so that a patient’s own immune system can target and destroy residual cancer cells that remain following treatment. Read more…
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