Supportive care

January 2, 2018

“Less amnesia seems to improve patient satisfaction.” — says a Dutch study on patients who had brain surgery while they were awake.

Which begs the question, would they remember their dissatisfaction with more amnesia?

Tibetan Yoga

For women taking chemo for breast cancer, Tibetan yoga may have modest short-term benefits on sleep quality — says an NIH-funded trial.

Women with early-stage breast cancer undergoing chemo were randomly assigned to a Tibetan yoga program, a stretching program, or usual care.

While yoga wasn’t better than stretching for total sleep disturbances or fatigue levels over time, women doing yoga had slightly fewer daily disturbances than those who were on the stretching program.

They also found that one week after treatment, women doing yoga were more active than those who were on the stretching program or received usual care. Average time awake after sleep was ~15 min longer with yoga vs stretching or usual care.

In other studies…

Like for healthy adults, breast cancer survivors who were diagnosed within the past two years may also see some benefit with their memory from physical exercise.

Rectal cancer surgery is said to be technically challenging. A closer look at MRI scans before surgery for rectal cancer may help surgeons assess the difficulty level of the operation in advance.

A review of studies says that for abdominal surgeries, Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols can shorten patients’ hospital stays and reduce complication rates compared to controls used in each respective study. This review excluded studies of colorectal surgeries.

I hope you liked reading about these studies. If you found it interesting or helpful, consider following Clinical Briefs, and drop by Twitter to say ‘hi’ :).