September 15, 2009, 7:54 AM CT

Stomach acid reducer pneumonia

A popular stomach-acid reducer used to prevent stress ulcers in critically ill patients needing breathing machine support increases the risk of those patients contracting pneumonia threefold, as per scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Hospital-acquired pneumonia is the leading cause of infection-related deaths in critically ill patients. It increases hospital stays by an average of seven to nine days, cost of care, and the risk of other complications.

"As best we can tell, patients who develop hospital-acquired pneumonia or ventilator-acquired pneumonia have about a 20 to 30 percent chance of dying from that pneumonia," said senior study author David L. Bowton, M.D., professor and head of the Section on Critical Care in the Department of Anesthesiology. "It's a significant event".

The study, published in a recent issue of CHEST, compared therapy with two drugs that decrease stomach acid: ranitidine, marketed under the name ZantacTM, and pantoprazole, marketed under the name ProtonixTM or PrilosecTM.

Both drugs decrease stomach acid, but the newer pantoprazole is considered more powerful and has become the drug of choice in a number of hospitals.

However, in the analysis of 834 patient charts, the scientists observed that hospitalized cardiothoracic surgery patients treated with pantoprazole were three times more likely to develop pneumonia......... Posted by: Sue      Read more         Source

June 4, 2009, 3:29 AM CT

Waiting times too long for bariatric surgery

Obesity is now acknowledged as a chronic disease with many related complications, and its prevalence has reached alarming epidemic proportions. While bariatric surgery is effective at treating the disease, access to this procedure is still too limited in Canada. The latest article published by Dr. Nicolas Christou, of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), in the recent issue of the Canadian Journal of Surgery assesses the waiting times for this procedure.

As per the study, the average waiting time for bariatric surgery in Canada is 5 years, a timeframe that is long compared with the 8-week average for cancer surgery or the 18-month average for cosmetic surgery. Yet a number of studies have shown that this type of procedure reduces the risk of death over 5 years from 40% to 85%: bariatric surgery can therefore save lives.

"Waiting times for bariatric surgery in Canada are much too long," Dr. Christou stated. "However, the provincial government's recent announcement of additional money for our speciality is a positive and beneficial step. This funding will help us address our main obstacle, a lack of resources, and therefore represents real hope for our patients".

This investment should also have positive spinoffs in the medium-term for the health care system. Another article recently published by Dr. Christou in the World Journal of Surgery showed that bariatric surgery is the only therapy that ensures major and lasting weight loss. It can also significantly improve the long-term health of these patients by reducing their risk of developing obesity-related complications, such as diabetes, cancer, or heart and respiratory diseases. The costs to the health care system to treat these related pathologies would therefore decrease, and the initial investment would lead to savings within 3 years......... Posted by: Sue      Read more         Source

February 18, 2009, 6:04 AM CT

Chemotherapy after surgery in gastric cancer

Peritoneal carcinomatosis can be thought of as a series of events that together form a peritoneal metastatic cascade. The peritoneal stromal tissue may be a friendly host for tumour proliferation, providing a rich source of growth factors and chemokines known to be involved in tumour metastasis. Till now, our understanding of the molecular mediators that orchestrate this cascade is weakly understood. Astragalus memebranaceus,a traditional chinese herbal medicine used for the therapy of common cold , diarrhea, fatigue anorexia and cardiac diseases. In recent years, it has been proposed that Astragalus may possess anti-apoptosis potential in peritoneal mesothelial cell. In spite of this, the anti-apoptosis effects of Astragalus saponin extract in human peritoneal mesothelial cells during peritoneal carcinomatosishas has not been studied. In this study, the anti-apoptosis effects of Astragalus saponin extract were investigated in human peritoneal mesothelial cells during peritoneal gastric cancer metastasis.

A research article to be published on February 7, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team led by Professor Hui-Mian Xu from Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital, China Medical University.Human peritoneal mesothelial cell line HMrSV5 was co-incubated with gastric cancer cell supernatant and/or Astragalus injection. Morphological changes were observed. Apoptosis was determined by transmission electron microscope. Apoptosis was also quantified by two methods: the detection of acridine orange/ethidium bromide-stained condensed nuclei by fluorescent microscopy and flow cytometry. The expressions of Bcl-2 and Bax were reviewed by immunostaining......... Posted by: Sue      Read more         Source

October 17, 2006, 9:30 PM CT

Bacteria Increase Risk Of Stomach Cancer

The bacteria Helicobacter pylori substantially increase the risk of cancer in the lower stomach, but it may decrease the risk of cancer near the junction between the esophagus and the stomach, as per a research studyin the October 19 Journal of the National Cancer Institute. This finding may help explain the changing rates and distributions of these cancers in Western countries over the past century.

Infection with H. pylori, which is known to cause ulcers, has also been linked to certain types of gastric cancer, but the strength of association varies with where the cancer is located in the stomach. Two types of gastric cancer usually exist -- cardia, or cancer of the upper stomach joining the esophagus; and noncardia, or cancer of the lower stomach.

A group of scientists led by Farin Kamangar, M.D., Ph.D., of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., selected 234 cardia and noncardia gastric cancer patients in the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study and matched them to controls. They assessed all of the subjects for H. pylori infection by testing their blood for antibodies that indicate previous infection.

The authors observed that the subjects infected with H. pylori had a higher risk of developing noncardia gastric cancer and a lower risk of developing cardia gastric cancer. They suggest that a decrease in H. pylori infections during the past century may be one reason that researchers have observed increasing rates of cardia and decreasing rates of noncardia gastric cancers in Western countries.........

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