Dr. Steve Info: Thursday
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7:00am Segment Info:
When you go for a surgical procedure you always ask about side effects, risks, that sort of thing.
However, if you're 60 or over, you may want to ask about how the operation will affect your memory. A new study finds people over the age of 60 who undergo elective surgery may be at higher risk of lasting memory problems. The report looked at over a thousand patients, and found that after three months nearly 13 percent of those over 60 had problems with brain function and memory. Generally about 30 to 40% of older people can have these problems, but this number, about 13% lasted longer than three months, and they were more likely to die within the first year after surgery.
How can you know if you're at risk for this problem?
They're not sure why some people have this problem, and others don't. It may be that surgery and anesthesia cause swelling in the brain that can affect the patient's ability to learn, retain or remember information, but now that we know this, we have to find out who's at risk and what we can do to minimize that risk.
Speaking of surgery, there's a new tool to help surgeons develop their skills.
That's right, you know the whole idea of a residency is to get the hand's on practice that's needed to become a qualified physician.. And surgery is no exception.
Now surgeons may soon be able to practice virtually. Using a virtual scalpel on a virtual body, with new 3d imaging technology. Talk about the ultimate video game - doctors use a special software program with high tech glasses and sensory gloves that relay signals between the virtual body and the surgeon. The gloves allow them to touch and feel both the soft tissues and hard structures of the body in a fully-interactive, 3d environment.
This must be great for medical students as well.
Medical students, residents, interns, even full-fledged attendings who want to learn a new procedure or new technique. There's nothing like practice, and this offers the next best thing to an actual patient.
With the virtual surgery, things can start to go wrong, or if they do something wrong then the patient can start to respond - the doctor has to react properly. If the surgeon fails, there's no malpractice. Just practice.
8:00am Segment Info:
Dietary calcium and dairy products have been thought to increase the risk of prostate cancer by affecting vitamin d metabolism. The research on this issue has been controversial.
But now a new study from the university of Hawaii finds there is no such risk. In fact, researchers say the amount of calcium and vitamin d in the diet appears to have little or no impact on the risk of prostate cancer. The study of more than 83,000 men between 45- and 75-years old men lasted 8 years. The men were from five different ethnic or racial groups, and lived in California or Hawaii.
Was there any risk of cancer at all from eating dairy?
Interestingly, when they looked further, they found that consuming low-fat or nonfat milk may increase the risk of localized tumors or non-aggressive tumors, but whole milk lowered the risk. A second study from the national cancer institute had similar results finding no connection between calcium, vitamin d and prostate cancer.
In other news, there's a new report on teen smoking.
That's right, good news on teen smoking.
It appears the number of teenagers who smoke here in new york city is down to 8 ½% - that trend started more than 10 years ago. This is according to a survey by the centers for disease control and prevention. To give you an idea of where we came from, in 1997 about 23% of teenagers smoked. So, it's a significant drop. Health officials say the reduction in teen smoking will eventually prevent at least 8,000 premature deaths.
What about the rest of the country?
New York City kids are doing better than the rest of the country. The national teenage smoking rate is about 23%. The city attributes the lower smoking rate to things like the cigarette tax increase. The smoking ban and of course the explicit TV and subway ads that graphically depict tobacco-related illnesses. You may not realize it but the city actually hires teenagers to go undercover with inspectors into stores to buy cigarettes to make sure that vendors are checking ID and are not selling to kids. They say compliance is at 93%.
