Rates of metastatic colorectal adenocarcinomas are increasing fastest among people 20 to 54 years of age in the United States, most notably in people under age 40, according to a new study. The rise is especially steep among younger Hispanic and Black people. “There is a direct relationship between decreasing age and increasing risk of distant-stage colorectal cancer,” said the study’s senior investigator Jordan Karlitz, MD, the chief of gastroenterology at Denver Health Medical Center and an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in Aurora.
Author: Praveen Suthrum
Endoscopic balloon dilation was more effective than fully covered self-expandable metal stents for Crohn’s disease strictures, according to a study published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. “Our findings suggest that [endoscopic balloon dilation (EBD)] is more effective than [fully covered self-expandable metal stents for Crohn’s disease strictures (FCSEMS)], with fewer patients in the EBD group requiring an intervention for symptomatic recurrence at 1 year than in the FCSEMS group, with an equally good safety profile,” Carme Loras, PhD, of the University of Barcelona, and colleagues wrote.
Between rising costs, physician burnout and increasing consolidation, physicians are increasingly choosing hospital employment over private practice. Becker’s spoke with 21 physicians on what’s driving physicians to private practice over hospitals. Editor’s note. These answers were edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
As he prepared to swallow his robot for the first time, Torrey Smith’s doctors warned that the battery was his greatest threat. If the capsule came apart and the battery burned the tissue lining his stomach, it would only be the beginning of a very bad experience. “I was just hoping that we would get any kind of a positive signal that we were on the right track,” Smith, co-founder and CEO of Endiatx, said of the June 2020 test. “At that time, our radio bandwidth was so limited. We were pushing 48 pixels square of grayscale, not even color,…
Pancreatic cancer is not one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers, but it is one of the most lethal due to its early local extension and metastatic behavior. Some of the reasons for this high fatality rate are late diagnosis of the disease, especially since symptoms are unspecific and appear rather late, and limited therapeutic options.
In this episode, I chat with Aasma Shaukat about her role as an advisor for iterative scopes, the benefits and pitfalls of physician engagement with the industry and her take on those rules of engagement. We also discuss the different avenues physicians can take their innovative ideas forward.
This transcript has been edited for clarity. This is Mark Lewis, MD, director of gastrointestinal (GI) oncology at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, Utah. I want to summarize some takeaway points from the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) GI Cancers Symposium. Many oncologists will tell you that the litmus test of a successful conference is how much it affects your practice, and I believe that data were presented at this meeting that will certainly affect practice immediately and give us a sneak preview of how our treatments may change in the future.
Colorectal cancer, the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men and in women, is projected to cause 52,280 deaths this year, according to the American Cancer Society. Seven notes: 1. The society is forecasting 106,180 new colon cancer cases and 44,850 new rectal cancer cases this year. 2. In 2021, there was a significant increase in advanced-stage colorectal cancer and precancerous growths, called polyps, in adults of all ages compared with 2020. The spike has been attributed to patients delaying care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought aerosol-related diseases to the forefront of the healthcare conversation. Health systems and GI practices alike continue to grapple with the best ways to diagnose and treat patients in a specialized, affordable, and safe manner. As telehealth and virtual visits become a mainstay in the healthcare delivery model, so must the consideration of at-home diagnostics, especially for aerosol-generating procedures like GI breath testing.
In a standard colonoscopy, as many as one-third of colorectal polyps and adenomas—typically benign clumps of cells that form on the lining of the colon and may be precursors to cancer—can go by undetected. Hoping to cut down on these inaccuracies is Medtronic, the global distributor of an artificial intelligence system originally developed by Cosmo Pharmaceuticals that aims to increase the number of precancerous polyps detected during a colonoscopy.