U-M researchers conducted the largest U.S. trial to determine effective cooling durations for patients who have undergone an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

JMIR Publications, a leading open-access digital health research publisher, has partnered with the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School (UMass Chan) on an Open Access publishing subscription

Hollings researchers have identified five critical care steps that can help patients with advanced head and neck cancer begin radiation within the recommended six weeks after surgery. Led by Hollings head and neck surgical oncologist Evan Graboyes, M.D., the study found that patients who completed four or five of these milestones had a 90% rate of starting radiation on time, compared with just 10% among those who completed one or no care steps. The findings provide cancer centers with practical targets for improving coordination across the many specialists involved in head and neck cancer care and helping patients receive lifesaving treatment without unnecessary delays.

Natalie Lui, MD, Associate Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery (Thoracic Surgery) at the Stanford School of Medicine, has been awarded a multi-year research project grant (R01) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study and develop a molecular imaging agent for localizing (or identifying) lung cancer tumors during surgery. 

Telemedicine commonly uses video calls to reach patients near and far, but the technology limits what senses caregivers can use during their evaluation. Dr. Pijuan Yu and his collaborators at Texas A&M University are seeking to go beyond telemedicine’s use of audio and video. They want to add an entirely new dimension: touch.

Locating small lung tumors located deep within the lungs remains challenging, as they need to be navigated through a complex network of tiny airways. Existing AI systems trained on incomplete human annotations may also fail to identify peripheral airways that were omitted from the training labels. Researchers from Pusan National University developed a novel AI framework, ASTRA-Net, which helps recover previously overlooked peripheral airways—potentially enabling more accurate bronchoscopy maps for better lung cancer diagnosis.

Although robot-assisted surgery (RAS) gives surgeons remarkable precision, little is known about how their stress levels fluctuate during challenging procedures. In a recent study, researchers from Japan monitored surgeons’ brain, muscle, and heart activity during live RASs and linked these physiological signals to the surgeons’ own stress ratings. The team identified objective physiological markers of stressful moments, which could be leveraged to improve surgical training, operating-room design, and surgeon well-being.

Researchers from Tokyo University of Science and Kyoto University have uncovered a key immune mechanism behind the atopic march, in which allergies that begin in the skin progress to affect the whole body. They found that IL-13 activates specialized immune cells that trigger the production of allergy-causing antibodies. The discovery could help researchers develop new ways to prevent severe allergic reactions and stop allergies from becoming more serious.