News From Around the Web
> Brain imaging soon after a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) or concussion can detect tiny lesions that can provide physicians with a target for treating people with mTBI, according to a study presented at the American Academy of Neurology's Annual Meeting in San Diego. "Our study suggests that imaging may be used to detect and distinguish between these lesions in a living person with mTBI and this finding has important implications for treatment," said Gunjan Parikh, M.D, with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Announcement
> MR-guided biopsy of the prostate is a safer and more effective alternative to the standard transrectal ultrasound-guided biopsy, according to two studies presented at the European Congress of Radiology. "MR-guided biopsy is a targeted biopsy with pinpoint accuracy and a higher detection rate." said Stephan Polanec, M.D. a lead researcher for one of the studies. "It also detects cancer in the anterior part of the prostate, which the transrectal approach isn't able to do." Article
> While MRI often is used before and after treatment of patients with lumbar-disc hernias and sciatica, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has determined that spine imaging is overused and may be inaccurate in some cases. "The discriminative power of MRI is much less than expected in patients who had sciatica before or who have had persistent complaints for more than one year," study author, Wilco Peul, professor and chairman of neurosurgery at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, told HealthDay News. Article
Health IT News
> A study published online in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association demonstrates how a simple software update can create unintended consequences that can have an adverse impact on patient care. Article
Health Finance News
> Healthcare prices in January rose only 1.5 percent higher than January 2012, marking the lowest healthcare price growth since December 1997, according to a new report from the Altarum Institute. Article
And Finally… The shroud of Turin has nothing on the drop cloth of Saugus, Mass. Article