Medical Journal November 2023 digital edition
November 17, 20231 min
Post Views: 2,130
New law on advance directives – HB 3162
November 17, 20239 min
BY Phuong D. Nguyen, Esq. and Michael Alexander, Esq., Brown & Fortunato, P.C. During the 88th legislative session, Texas passed HB 3162 to update the state’s requirements for advance directives. The new law added granular detail to the various procedures associated with advance directives and do-not-resuscitate (“DNR”) orders, set specific timeframes for certain notices and events, and imposed new reporting requirements on health care facilities. The new law became effective as of September 1,...
The best way to have 1:1 meetings with your team members
November 17, 202312 min
By George A. Reeves, III, Partner, Fisher Phillips One-on-one (or 1:1) meetings are essential to ensure your organization is operating smoothly and are a crucial part of an effective human resources strategy to ensure good workplace relations in the healthcare setting. They are regularly scheduled meetings – perhaps weekly, perhaps monthly, or at some other regular cadence – between supervisors and team members. The sky’s the limit when setting an appropriate agenda for them,...
Healthy food choices during the holiday season
November 17, 20239 min
BY Hasan Yasin, MD, Integrative and Behavioral Medicine Fellow, and Samuel Mathis, MD, Assistant Professor, UTMB “Our bodies are our gardens. Our wills are our gardeners.” – William Shakespeare With the holidays coming soon, many conversations turn to the foods we eat or plan to eat during the holidays. This can be a prime conversation to recommend appropriate and healthy food choices to our patients. Small health-conscious decisions can profoundly impact a patient’s health...
Texas hospitals going above and beyond on charity, indigent care
November 17, 20238 min
By John Hawkins, President and CEO, THA Everyone needs and deserves medical care. Texas hospitals understand that as well as anyone. And in a state with the country’s highest uninsured rate, where charity care and indigent care are a fact of life – from the Panhandle to Port Isabel, from El Paso to Houston – our hospitals fulfill that need. Highlighting that reality is particularly important right now. Because both nationally and in...
MD Anderson and Jazz Pharmaceuticals announce a five-year collaboration to evaluate zanidatamab in HER2-expressing cancers
November 17, 20234 min
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc announced a five-year strategic research collaboration agreement to evaluate zanidatamab, Jazz’s investigational HER2-targeted bispecific antibody, in multiple HER2-expressing cancers. The collaboration will combine MD Anderson’s translational medicine and clinical research expertise with Jazz’s expanding oncology drug development capabilities to investigate the potential of zanidatamab as monotherapy and in combination with other treatments for patients with different tumor types and stages. This includes its possible...
Study identifies RNA-binding proteins as novel drivers of DNA damage repair defects
November 17, 20232 min
Mutations in DNA repair genes are known drivers of hereditary cancers. However, only a tiny fraction of patients with hereditary breast or ovarian cancers have BRCA1/2 mutations involved in homologous recombination (HR) DNA repair. Researchers led by Nidhi Sahni, Ph.D., calculated scores across tumors from The Cancer Genome Atlas to comprehensively identify positive or negative tumors for HR defects. Around 75% of tumors with a positive HR score did not have deficiencies in known HR genes, but the researchers identified nearly...
Hidden microprotein has functional role in colorectal cancer gene regulation
November 17, 20232 min
The human genome contains thousands of non-canonical open reading frames (ORFs) with the potential to encode functional proteins, including microproteins. These unannotated, cryptic proteins are not easily detected by conventional approaches and are considered part of the “dark” proteome. Previous studies have highlighted the tumor-suppressive function of some microproteins in colorectal cancer (CRC), but their role in cancer remains largely unknown. To provide further insights, researchers led by Yiwen Chen, Ph.D., used an integrated multi-omic approach combining ribosome...
UTMB Utilizes Cutting-Edge Robotic Bronchoscopy
November 17, 20232 min
The University of Texas Medical Branch recently started implementing a state-of-the-art robotic bronchoscopy system. This technology is set to revolutionize diagnostic procedures in pulmonary medicine, offering unprecedented precision and minimally invasive capabilities. “This robotic bronchoscopy system represents a significant leap forward in the field of diagnostic bronchoscopy to identify early-stage lung cancer before it has spread,” says Dr. Shawn Nishi, Interventional Pulmonologist at UTMB, about the impact of this technology. “This offers the best...
Lung cancer outcomes significantly improved with immunotherapy-based treatment given before and after surgery
November 17, 20237 min
A regimen of pre-surgical immunotherapy and chemotherapy followed by post-surgical immunotherapy significantly improved event-free survival (EFS) and pathologic complete response (pCR) rates compared to chemotherapy alone for patients with operable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to results of a Phase III trial reported by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The AEGEAN trial evaluated durvalumab given perioperatively, meaning therapy is given both before and after surgery. Participants in the trial received either pre-surgical (neoadjuvant) durvalumab and platinum-based chemotherapy followed...