Category Archives: Cancer
Cancer Risk and Computed Tomography Imaging
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th April 2025Projected Lifetime Cancer Risks From Current Computed Tomography Imaging is a study just published in JAMA Internal Medicine. The study concludes: “That at current utilization and radiation dose levels, CT examinations in 2023 were projected to result in approximately 103,000 future cancers over the course of the lifetime of exposed patients. If current practices persist,…
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Cancer Statistics 2025
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th January 2025The American Cancer Society has released its annual report on the incidence and mortality of cancer in the USA. The full report can be downloaded below. I’ll summarize the salient features of the ACS’s data. They come from registries that assembled the information (occurrence, outcomes, and incidence data) through the end of 2021 and mortality…
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Screening for Colon Cancer in Older Adults
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th April 2024Screening for disease is not as straightforward as it may seem on cursory examination. Sometimes it does not influence the course of the screened for disease and other times it may cause more harm than good as early intervention may result in more morbidity than if the disease had been undiagnosed. Then there is the…
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The USPSTF Recommends Biennial Mammograms for Women Starting at 40
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th May 2023The US Preventive Services Task Force has issued a new draft recommending biennial screening mammography for women ages 40 to 74 years. This recommendation has received widespread notice in the lay press. Workers in the field along with breast cancer advocates want even more (annual) screening. Everybody commenting on this recommendation seems to support it…
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Prostate Cancer and the Federal Reserve
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th March 2023The two subjects of the above title seem to have little in common. But they are both examples of action unmoored from knowledge. If the scientific foundation of medicine is compared to that of economics, specifically the actions of the world’s central banks, the practitioners of the former are certainly closer to the dictates of…
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Cancer Statistics 2022
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th January 2022Every January the American Cancer Society publishes Cancer Statistics based on the most recent data available. The abstract from the report is immediately below. The entire report is available at the end of this article. Abstract: Each year, the American Cancer Society estimates the numbers of new cancer cases and deaths in the United States…
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Head Start as an Heuristic For Medical Students, Treatment of Strokes, and the Law of Unintended Consequences
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th March 2013For more than 25 years I have used the Head Start program to teach medical students data analysis, how to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of treatment regimens, and how belief commonly trumps evidence. This process usually followed the recommendation of a course of treatment by a consultant to a patient who was on a general medicine service…
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Public Health Programs Partner With Oncology to Conquer Cancer
Written by Charlotte Kellogg | 9th November 2012As oncology experts and cancer patients search for a cure to the disease, they are turning to public health programs to help them organize collaborative efforts to meet these goals. In today’s post by Charlotte Kellogg, she explores different methods that advocates who have trained for careers in public health help cancer-fighting communities crowdsource the…
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Warren Buffett’s Prostate Cancer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th May 2012Warren Buffett was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. The 81 year old investor released the following statement about his disease: To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway: This is to let you know that I have been diagnosed with stage I prostate cancer. The good news is that I’ve been told by my doctors that my condition is not…
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Screening for Cancer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th May 2012Below is the PowerPoint presentation of the talk Screening for Cancer that I gave today to Spring Cancer Conference sponsored by the Lubbock-Crosby-Garza County Medical Society. A related presentation can be found here. Screening for Cancer
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