Plenty of news were posted on the Among Doctors network over the past days. Some of the highlights of what our fellow colleagues shared include the clinical assessment of patients with chest pain and practical guidelines for the lung cancer screening. Let’s have a more in-depth look at this week’s top updates:
- Clinical assessment of patients with chest pain: a systematic review of predictive tools
The risk of coronary artery disease can be estimated on clinical grounds in patients with chest pain in different clinical settings with high accuracy. The estimation of probabilities of coronary artery disease could be used for a better management of patients with chest pain and also in the development of future predictive tools. - Lung cancer screening: a systematic review of clinical practice guidelines
The use of low-dose computed tomography presents an exciting development for high-risk individuals. Several expert bodies and governments have recently issued and updated their clinical practice guidelines for lung cancer screening. In this review the clinical practice guidelines are evaluated and the recommendations are compared between them. - Smoking associated with increased mortality in breast cancer patients
In a prospective cohort study of over 4500 women with invasive breast cancer, patients who actively smoked prior to breast cancer diagnosis demonstrated a 25% increase in overall mortality compared to never smokers. Patients who continued to smoke post-breast cancer diagnosis demonstrated a significant increase in both cancer-specific and overall mortality. Patients who quit smoking after breast cancer diagnosis demonstrated a 9% risk reduction in overall mortality.
