For the 23 million U.S. women who get mammograms each year, there is an increasingly urgent question: digital or film?
Interest is growing in the digital version of the breast-cancer screening test, driven in part by a study last fall in the New England Journal of Medicine that said digital was better for some women. The findings quickly became a marketing tool for makers of digital-mammography machines and hospitals that have them. Sales of the machines have been rising, with one major manufacturer citing digital equipment as the driving force behind record second-quarter revenue.
But some hospitals and doctors are concerned that the advantages of digital are being overestimated and may be causing women to delay getting a mammogram until digital machines arrive in their area. Still only about 11% of the 8,800 U.S. mammography facilities are estimated to have digital.
The advice from doctors: Don’t wait, especially if you are in one of the groups for whom digital has no demonstrated advantages. The study found that digital was better at detecting cancer only for premenopausal women, those under 50 years old, or those who have dense breasts. The majority of women who get mammograms are over 50, and looking at the 40,000 women in the study as a whole, the new technology was found to be no better than film overall.
Category: Health/Fitness
New Rand Healthcare Study
1. We get only 55 percent of recommended medical attention [TC: hey, didn’t an earlier Rand study show us that more care doesn’t translate into better health care outcomes?]
2. “Those with annual family incomes over $50,000 had quality scores that were just 3.5 percentage points higher than those with incomes less than $15,000….insurance status had no real effect on quality.”
This should make everyone uncomfortable, but most of all those who think that access to health insurance is a panacea. Here is the press release, the piece is in The New England Journal of Medicine. Am I supposed to believe the following?:
A Delightful Few Days Skiing at Wisconsin’s Whitecap Mountains
A March visit to Whitecap Mountain
Spring break 2006 presented an opportunity to check out a ski area that was within a reasonable distance (avoid flights) and promised a decent amount of snow. I surfed the web last week seeking such a destination and found Whitecap, a resort that Ski Magazine has posted favorable words on the years. Those reviews, along with a very attractive package ($199 per person for 3 nights, 3 day lift tickets, 2 dinners, 3 breakfast meals, rentals and a one hour daily group lesson) sealed the deal.
A Pleasant Saturday Morning at Tyrol Basin
I’ve been avoiding trips to local ski areas from many years. The AA tag on my ski bag tells the story. The last time the bag was used was a flight from Albuquerque to Dallas – our last pre-children ski trip. The ski bag, along with my boot bag made the journey from Dallas to Madison in 1993.
Living in a four season climate, my recreation thoughts have generally drifted toward warm weather vacations. However, and perhaps giving in to the inevitable, I put my fun but evidently outmoded skis (purchased at Denver’s Gart Brothers during my days there) in the car and made the short drive to Tyrol Basin early Saturday morning.
A glorious, sunny day, there were perhaps 15 cars in the lot as we walked toward the ticket office. The temperature and conditions were quite good, with only a bit of ice detected here and there.
Moments later, standing on top of the basin, I enjoyed the view and thought that it was quite pleasant to be within an hour’s drive of this place.
While checking out the basin’s runs – all except the moguls, my thoughts turned to:
- Training:
I saw two (surprising) examples of skiers evidently losing control and requiring ski patrol assistance. Years ago, when I learned to ski in a more serious way (via a Swiss instructor at Loveland), he advised that I take a lesson at the beginning of each ski season. I think this is correct – and I spent a bit of time on Tyrol’s bunny hill last weekend, regaining my alpine perspective. - The Road Not Taken:
Like Frost, I prefer the less travelled and popular routes. Tyrol makes it easy to turn right off the main lift and ski down toward another lift, where very few people where skiing (moguls – not for me, but the black and blue runs were enjoyable). I chose this route quite a few times and very much enjoyed the views, serenity and a rather quiet late morning outing. - Safety:
There’s quite a bit more safety enhancements than I recall. A large, orange plastic fence now greets the skier as she turns off the triple chair. An out of control skier will be caught in this, rather than careening down the hill. - The rise of snowboarding:
Just starting to take off when I last skied, snowboarding is big time, today. I can see the friction between traditional alpine downhillers and snowboarders. - Variety:
Snowboarders, downhillers and telemark skiers mingled reasonably well at Tyrol. It’s great to see a few telemark folks sliding downhill.
Finally, my eldest added these notes:
You are weird skiing is odd and my lower back is sore!!!!! Overall it was a fun experience, and I would love to go more often next year!!! Thank you Nora for teaching me!!
Adults Can Take Steps to Delay Alzheimer’s
Older adults who exercise at least three times a week keep their minds sharper as they age, a new study shows.
Researchers at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle found that regular exercise, in as little as 15 minute intervals, can delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in adults over 65. Their study offers the most conclusive evidence to date that physical activity can help stem the degenerative diseases.
iPod Personal Trainer
But that was before she tried MP3 workouts. Taking advantage of sale prices last January at www.cardiocoach.com, she downloaded the first three volumes of a five-part series. Cardio Coach audios are designed to be used during any kind of cardiovascular exercise: running, stair climbing, even walking. For 30 to 60 minutes Sean O’Malley, the personal trainer who created the programs, offers encouragement as he guides the listener through a series of sprints – and for those exercising on machines, hills – that alternate with easier periods. Original music accompanies the ebb and flow of the intervals.
Genetic Testing for the Rest of Us – over the Internet
DNA Direct offers genetics tests that can reveal a predisposition to a half dozen diseases or conditions, among them breast and ovarian cancer, cystic fibrosis, clotting disorders and infertility. Phelan obtained her chromosomal analysis the same way any client could. She spoke with the company’s genetic counselor and then went for a blood test. The counselor reviewed the findings to help her interpret what they meant. In Phelan’s case, the results provided a surprise — what looked like partial Turner’s syndrome. It was a possible clue to her past struggle with infertility, although she’s never had any other symptoms.
“When I realized this I was thrilled,” she said. “There may have been an underlying genetic factor. … I thought, wow, women could go through this and have this help. It can work backward and help diagnose the past.”
White Noise
While veteran rocker Pete Townshend blames his hearing loss on a lifetime spent using headphones, experts say today’s iPod Generation is storing up trouble for the future by listening to music at high volumes. Is this a crisis in the making?
What employees think about consumer-directed health plans
Vishal Agrawal, Paul D. Mango, and Kimberly O. Packard:
Eager to curb the rising cost of health care, many US insurers and employers are considering consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs), which are designed to lower costs by giving consumers more responsibility for managing their own health care spending.1 Indeed, a survey indicates that this interest is more than justified. We found that the plans encourage value-conscious behavior, increase the consumers’ level of engagement with their well-being, and may even promote behavior that leads to better long-term health.
In March 2005 we surveyed 2,500 consumers, 1,000 of whom had been enrolled in a CDHP for at least one year.2 We also conducted extensive interviews with 25 of these CDHP consumers and with seven benefits managers who administer the plans.3 Our goal was to learn how consumers’ behavior changes when they become responsible for a greater share of their health care costs.
Seniors Embrace Blogs
AP:
There’s Dad’s Tomato Garden Journal, Dogwalk Musings, and, of course, the Oldest Living Blogger.
“It’s too easy to sit in your own cave and let the world go by, eh?” said Ray Sutton, the 73-year-old Oldest Living Blogger and a retired electrician who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. “It keeps the old head working a little bit so you’re not just sitting there gawking at TV.”