Author
Study shows benefit of scheduling lung screens with mammograms
Oct. 18, 2021—Women who are longtime smokers could potentially save their lives by undergoing lung screens on the same day they schedule mammograms, according to a study by Vanderbilt researchers published in the Journal of Medical Screening. The researchers reviewed data from 18,040 women who were screened for breast cancer in 2015 at two imaging facilities that also performed...
New data offer insights on COVID treatments for people with cancer
Oct. 5, 2020—Data on treatment outcomes of people with cancer diagnosed with COVID-19 reveal a racial disparity in access to remdesivir, an antiviral drug that has been shown to shorten hospital stays, and increased mortality associated with dexamethasone, a steroid that has had the opposite effect in the general patient population. The data on 2,186 adults in...
Treatment approved for acute graft-versus-host disease
Sep. 9, 2019—The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved ruxolitinib, the first drug for patients with acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) who have an inadequate response to steroid treatment. Madan Jagasia, MBBS, MS, MMHC, chief medical officer and co-leader of the Translational Research and Interventional Oncology Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), was a lead investigator...
Combination therapy improves small cell lung cancer survival
Feb. 28, 2019—Patients with stage IV small cell lung cancer lived longer when given the immunotherapy atezolizumab with chemotherapy, setting the stage for what could become the first new treatment approved in decades for this particularly aggressive form of lung cancer. Results of the study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that patients...
Study provides robust evidence of sex differences with Alzheimer’s gene
Sep. 13, 2018— The APOE gene, the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, may play a more prominent role in disease development among women than men, according to new research from the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center. The research confirmed recent studies that carrying the APOE ε4 allele has a greater association with Alzheimer’s disease among...
Global Good
Sep. 11, 2018—Street vendors sell caskets along the road that leads to the hospital in Mwanza, Tanzania. It’s a stark reality, this expectation of death distilled into an image, then seared into memory. Reid Thompson, MD, can’t forget what he saw, and he doesn’t want to forget. “When you walk out of the hospital and come down...
Remote Control
Mar. 6, 2017—When Willem Leister Einthoven, inventor of the electrocardiogram (EKG), sent an EKG over telephone lines back in 1906, it was the first example of modern telecardiology. More than a century later, Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute cardiologist Allen Naftilan, M.D., Ph.D., puts a stethoscope to his ears and listens to the heartbeat of a patient...
Tuning the Brain, Taming the Tremors
Aug. 19, 2016— Six years after they met in an Internet chat room, Linda Jones and Steve Retterer woke up in the same Vanderbilt Adult Hospital room. “I think it’s daylight,” Jones said, as the anesthesia began to wear off. “I think you’re right,” Retterer answered, groggily. The romance they unknowingly began in 2005 when they were...