Author: Praveen Suthrum

A minimally invasive approach to emergent colorectal surgery was associated with better outcomes, including for older adults, a retrospective study found. After adjusting for demographics, BMI, and primary surgical site, those who underwent minimally invasive surgery (MIS) were more likely to be discharged home (OR 2.08, 95% CI 1.82-2.37), were less likely to have an adverse event (OR 0.51, 95% CI 0.46-0.58), and had a shorter length of stay (mean difference in days -2.36, 95% CI -2.93 to -1.79; P<0.001 for all) compared with those who underwent open surgery, reported Vlad Simianu, MD, MPH, of the Virginia Mason Medical Center in…

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The private liquid biopsy developer Freenome has eschewed the multi-cancer path to focus instead on a very specific setting for its first blood test: screening for colorectal cancer. But the readout of its vast trial in this setting has been delayed from this year to next, and in the meantime Guardant Health, an established liquid biopsy player, will report data from a very similar study of a rival test. Freenome is banking on its novel approach, looking at RNA and proteins as well as DNA, winning out in the clinic. It might be a harder task to win out in…

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AGA recently held its 11th annual AGA Tech Summit, the flagship meeting for the AGA Center for GI Innovation and Technology (CGIT). Despite being virtual for the first time, the meeting continued its mission of bringing together key stakeholders to discuss current advances in GI innovation and technology and next steps to push the field forward. We’re excited to share with you some meeting highlights.

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Currently, the best performing methods in colonoscopy polyp detection are primarily based on deep neural networks (DNNs), which are usually trained on large amounts of labeled data. However, different hospitals use different endoscope models and set different imaging parameters, which causes the collected endoscopic images and videos to vary greatly in style. There may be variations in the color space, brightness, contrast, and resolution, and there are also differences between white light endoscopy (WLE) and narrow band image endoscopy (NBIE). We call these variations the domain shift. The DNN performance may decrease when the training data and the testing data…

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The news: Teladoc and Northwell are expanding their partnership to offer Northwell patients virtual care inside and outside of the health system. Northwell is tapping a solution Teladoc’s codeveloped with Microsoft that improves clinical workflows and collaboration among Northwell providers.It will be implemented at 20 of Northwell’s 22 hospitals to start, with plans to expand over time.

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