Entries for April 2008

I hate doctor's offices and hospitals gowns as much as the next guy, but the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Ad Council have a point with their recently released "Real Men Wear Gowns" public-service advertising campaign. Take a look:

Democratic lawmakers have called for the resignation of Ira Katz, the chief mental health official at the United States Veterans Affairs Department, after E-mails emerged suggesting that Katz attempted to conceal the high rate of suicide among veterans.

One E-mail has a subject heading of "Shh!" and states that 12,000 veterans a year attempt suicide while under care of the veterans agency—far more than the department has admitted publicly. Another, according to the Associated Press, says an average of 18 veterans kill themselves each day. If that number is correct, it means that more veterans have killed themselves in one year than have been killed in combat during the entire Iraq war.

Puberty's rough on a growing boy's heart. And not just because of the roller coaster of testosterone-induced crushes that don't always pan out as hoped. During adolescence, boys experience silent physiological changes that leave them at a higher risk of heart disease than their female counterparts for the remainder of their lives, researchers reported today.

Men's blood pressure and triglyceride levels increase during adolescence, even as their beneficial HDL cholesterol levels fall, Antoinette Moran, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital in Minneapolis, found after tracking 507 teens. In contrast, teenage girls experience decreases in triglycerides and an increase in HDL. You can click here to read more about the study, which was published in the journal Circulation.

After writing an article last September about prostate cancer treatment options, I received a flood of mail chastising me for not mentioning proton beam therapy. I noted in a subsequent blog entry that, as a result of that feedback from readers, I decided to take a second look at proton beam therapy. The resulting magazine piece was published Wednesday on the U.S. News website and will appear in print on Monday. Let me know what you think of it.

For that article, I expanded my scope beyond prostate cancer to other cancers and also looked at the expansion of proton centers. It's a fascinating and complex topic, and one that I expect we'll be hearing a lot more about in the future. In the meantime, I've excerpted and responded to six of the comments I got on my earlier blog post. Here they are, in no particular order:

Part 2 of six posts today about proton beam therapy. To start from the top, click here.

MD of Missouri on head-to-head comparisons

...I would suggest that, while proton beam therapy is excellent, so is brachytherapy (radioactive seed implants) done by an expert. I would welcome a head-to-head comparison between the two. I would bet that brachytherapy would be proven to provide similar excellent outcomes.

Part 3 of six posts today about proton beam therapy. To start from the top, click here.

Rick Plummer of Florida on the "stonewalling effect" from urologists

...I was not informed about proton therapy by my urologist, like many of these men, and found it on my own through diligent research on the internet. When I asked him about the option I was told "Oh no! Don't go there. They will burn you up!" There was a unifying theme to the stories I was told by men in treatment at [University of Florida]. Almost all of us had to overcome this "stonewalling effect" or discouragement by the doctors and were left to our own devices to come to a decision about which treatment option to take. We were universally happy with our treatment at the Proton Institute and felt bonded as if we were soldiers in a battle unit. Often that meant we had gone up against a common enemy and prevailed. Not Cancer, but our Urologist!

Part 4 of six posts today about proton beam therapy. To start from the top, click here.

Harold Peters of Tennessee on post-treatment side effects of therapy

My eight weeks at LLUMC was an extended holiday, with free daily use of the LLU recreation center a definite bonus. However, as it turned out, I am one of the small percentage who did experience post-treatment side effects. There were none whatsoever during the treatment, but we were cautioned that a small percentage of those receiving proton treatment might experience some post-treatment bleeding—either rectally or during ejaculation, or both. I experienced both.