Access to physician-assisted death is expanding across the U.S., but the procedure remains in Montana’s legal gray zone more than a decade after the state Supreme Court ruled physicians could use a dying patient’s consent as a defense.
On Monday, Connecticut will be the first state to begin vaccinating anyone from age 55 to 64 — instead of people with chronic health issues and essential workers.
Multiple-gene panel tests are frequently offered to patients at risk for diseases such as cancer that can assess more than 80 genes. But in screening a wide variety of genes, doctors might see a variant that hasn’t yet been deciphered and be unable to explain its significance, leaving patients with concerns and no answers.
Older patients with cancer, dementia or other serious illnesses should check with their doctors, but medical experts recommend the vaccine for most people.
A proposal in Washington state would use right-to-try laws to allow terminally ill patients access to psilocybin — the famed magic mushrooms of America’s psychedelic ’60s — to ease depression and anxiety.
The National Cancer Institute plans to launch a multisite study next year involving roughly 5,000 women to assess whether self-sampling at home for the human papillomavirus that causes cervical cancer is comparable to screening in a doctor’s office.
Cancer patients seeking care during the coronavirus pandemic face an array of obstacles as states reopen, such as heavily restricted in-hospital appointments and new clinical trials on hold.
As hospitals across the country are forced to delay or cancel certain medical procedures in response to the surge in patients with COVID-19, those hard choices are disrupting care for some people with serious illnesses.
California has one of the lowest rates of new lung cancer cases in the country, attributed largely to its aggressive anti-tobacco policies. But gaps in the state’s health care system mean that people who are diagnosed with the disease, or at a high risk of getting it, often fall through the cracks.
Companies are aggressively touting 3D mammograms, although there’s no evidence they save lives.