News: Patient Care

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) guidelines that determine which smokers qualify for CT scans exclude significant numbers of African Americans who develop lung cancer, a health disparity that merits modifications to lung cancer screening criteria, according to a study from Vanderbilt researchers.

Immunotherapy is helping cancer patient Roszell Mack Jr. to continue going to his job on a Kentucky horse farm.

Customized oral stents can minimize harm from radiation therapy for some head and neck cancer patients.

Bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) is better than a tape measure for assessing a woman’s risk for developing lymphedema, painful swelling in the arm after breast cancer surgery, according to interim results of a recent study.

Vanderbilt Dermatology in collaboration with the Nashville Dermatology Society is offering free skin cancer screenings on Saturday, June 15, from 9 a.m. to noon at Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks, 719 Thompson Lane, Suite 26300.

The American Cancer Society now recommends people at average risk be screened for colorectal cancer via colonoscopy, or another method, starting at age 45, rather than at age 50.

A recent study provides clinicians genomic guidance for surveillance of targeted therapy resistance in patients with EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer — and more importantly — another drug option when resistance occurs.

Tom Deweese can keep up with his grandchildren because of a highly specialized surgery using hot chemotherapy that saved his leg.

Prostate cancer patients in Nashville and Los Angeles are benefiting from a computer-based decision aid that implements the latest study results to tailor treatment options to an individual’s quality-of-life priorities.

The free annual screening will be Friday, April 12, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the John S. Odess Clinic for Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery in the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center at 7209 Medical Center East, South Tower. No appointment is necessary.