Hot MedFax

It sounds bizarre (and painful), but doctors in Britain have found a way to double the chances that a woman will get pregnant through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) by simply scratching her endometrium . According to bmj.com, "Endometrial scratching involves causing intentional damage to the endometrium through biopsy or curettage. An association between endometrial scratching and an increased chance of pregnancy was first described a decade ago, although the underlying mechanism remains unknown." Katie Moisse reports at abcnews.com that the procedure , called local endometrial injury, takes about 15 minutes and costs as little as $200.  Women are locally anesthetized, then scraped quickly with a sharp instrument.  Doctors liken it to a Pap smear. "Because the success rate of IVF is modest, these results are of considerable interest since the proposed intervention is neither expensive nor time-consuming and is apparently devoid of significant complications," Moi...

Imagine this.  Instead of a painful mammogram or biopsy, some day soon doctors may be able to tell if you have breast cancer -- and its severity -- from your urine. According to newswise.com, a researcher at Missouri University of Science and Technology has devised a way to detect biomarkers that indicate breast cancer in urine even before a mammogram picks it up. An excessively high concentration of certain metabolites can indicate the presence of cancer, the story reports, all from a simple urinalysis. What really speaks to me is the possibility that this simple test could possibly figure out whether you have a cancer that needs to be treated right away, or one that is less aggressive and may need no treatment.  I was in that in-between box, and unfortunately, for right now, all potential cancers (like DCIS) are treated as though they truly are cancer because those of us with this cellular abnormality are at very high risk of developing invasive cancer. My case of DC...

Did you know that waiting for biopsy results is equal to learning you have cancer, stress-wise?  Well, it is.  I am living proof of that. Once the waiting was over, and we moved on to treatment options, I felt calmer. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/the-anxiety-of-the-biopsy/