Latest Clinical & Research News
Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension cares for patients with a wide range of hormonal and other related disorders, including diabetes, hypertension and thyroid disease. Division Chief Ursula B. Kaiser, MD, recently discussed some of her group’s accomplishments and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected physicians and other health care providers in the division.
Timely diagnosis of an acute aortic dissection is the first key step to saving a patient’s life. However, not all hospitals are equipped to handle the next critical step: administering timely treatment to reestablish true lumen flow in the aorta. In these cases, according to an invited expert review published in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, rapid transfer of the patient to a center of excellence is advisable.
Today’s cancer therapies are helping patients live longer. However, treatments including surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and certain targeted and immunological therapies increase the risk of developing cancer-associated thrombosis (CAT). Physicians at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Heart & Vascular Center are working with colleagues at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) to help prevent CAT and minimize its effect on timely cancer care.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Walter W. Chan, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Gastrointestinal Motility at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and colleagues in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, have led several clinical studies investigating COVID-19 infection presentation, risk factors and outcomes on the gastrointestinal (GI) system.
Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new way to deliver drugs and modulate nutrition through a synthetic coating in the small intestine. A proof-of-concept study for the gastrointestinal synthetic epithelial linings (GSEL) system was conducted under grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and results were published in Science Translational Medicine.
While traditional tumor boards are common at most academic medical centers, Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC) has taken its 10-year-old tumor board to the next level by integrating molecular pathology into their discussions.
The Division of Urology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital provides expert, individualized care for a range of urological conditions. Because many urological treatments have similar clinical outcomes, division surgeons are gathering data called patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). They plan to use PROMs to better identify the nuances of treatment outcomes and determine how these outcomes affect quality of life for individual patients.
Management of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) can be notoriously complicated due to factors such as heterogeneity of disease manifestations and comorbidity considerations. Despite the emergence of promising new therapies, there remains considerable variation in quality of care from diagnosis through treatment and follow-up management.
Laryngopharyngeal reflux disease (LPR), an inflammatory condition related to the direct and indirect effects of gastroduodenal content reflux, affects up to 30 percent of otolaryngology patients worldwide. The condition leads to symptoms including chronic throat clearing and cough, excess throat mucus, postnasal drip and vocal changes, which can significantly impact the patient’s quality of life.
At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, The Lung Center has launched a new extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) Transport Program to provide lifesaving ECMO treatment to hospitalized patients at community hospitals in New England. The unique program arranges for ECMO specialists at the Brigham to travel to hospitals in the community, put patients on ECMO and bring them back to The Lung Center for complex pulmonary care.