Diagnostics & Testing

Through­out the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, clin­i­cal test­ing has been an impor­tant area of focus. Sift­ing through all the infor­ma­tion avail­able can be quite the task. Learn more about the dif­fer­ent types of tests avail­able to you.

You’ve fol­lowed your physician’s rec­om­men­da­tion and had your year­ly screen­ing mam­mo­gram per­formed, but then you get called back for addi­tion­al imag­ing. Nat­u­ral­ly your ini­tial reac­tion caus­es your blood pres­sure to spike…this is a test that detects breast can­cer after all. How­ev­er, only 10% of women called back for more tests are found to have breast can­cer accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety. Learn more about call-backs and why it might not nec­es­sar­i­ly be cancer.

Dual Ener­gy X‑ray Absorp­tiom­e­try (DEXA), also known as Bone Den­si­ty test­ing, is used to diag­nose osteo­poro­sis and/​or osteope­nia. This scan uti­lizes very low dose radi­a­tion to exam­ine the den­si­ty of the bone tis­sue to deter­mine the effects of osteo­poro­sis and assess the risk for poten­tial fractures.

Radi­a­tion Ther­a­py, through the lin­ear accel­er­a­tor, com­bines imag­ing, beam deliv­ery and sophis­ti­cat­ed motion man­age­ment to accu­rate­ly and pre­cise­ly tar­get tumors with speed.

Your liv­er sup­ports many of your essen­tial bod­i­ly func­tions, includ­ing pro­duc­ing both the essen­tial pro­teins that help with blood clot­ting and the diges­tive enzymes that help your body absorb vit­a­mins and min­er­als. Your liv­er also works to remove waste and oth­er tox­ins from your body. Main­tain­ing your liv­er func­tion is impor­tant to your over­all health and there are many ways you can keep your liv­er healthy, includ­ing sim­ple diet and lifestyle modifications.

When hav­ing radi­a­tion ther­a­py, pre­ci­sion is key. Since tar­get­ing cer­tain cells, and leav­ing oth­ers alone, is of upmost impor­tance; sur­face guid­ed radi­a­tion ther­a­py is often used. Sur­face Guid­ed Radi­a­tion Ther­a­py (SGRT) is a rapid­ly grow­ing tech­nique which uses stereo vision tech­nol­o­gy to track patients’ sur­face in 3D, for both set­up and motion man­age­ment dur­ing radi­a­tion ther­a­py. This tech­nique is also some­times referred to Opti­cal Sur­face Mon­i­tor­ing Sys­tem (OSMS), Align RT, or Vision RT.

What is Sleep Apnea?

Did you know that sleep apnea affects more than 18 mil­lion Amer­i­cans? It is just as com­mon as type 2 dia­betes. Apnea is the med­ical term for ​“to stop breath­ing.” Sleep apnea is an invol­un­tary stop­ping of breath­ing while you are asleep. Untreat­ed sleep apnea can cause you to stop breath­ing mul­ti­ple times through­out the night. You are unlike­ly to be aware that this hap­pen­ing but may expe­ri­ence headaches, tired­ness dur­ing the day and dry mouth when wak­ing up. In addi­tion, untreat­ed sleep apnea can increase the risk of stroke, heart arrhyth­mias and heart attack.

Water mol­e­cules are the most abun­dant mol­e­cules in the human body, so these are the very mol­e­cules the MRI machine uses to cre­ate an image. Water mol­e­cules con­sist of oxy­gen and hydro­gen atoms, and the core of a hydro­gen atom-its nucle­us-is a sin­gle pro­ton. Pro­tons have a basic, inher­ent prop­er­ty called nuclear spin caus­ing them to spin like a gyro­scope or a top. Because the pro­tons also have an elec­tri­cal charge, the spin makes them act like tiny mag­nets. A mag­net­ic field, which is mea­sured in Tes­la (T), will make these spin­ning pro­tons wob­ble, like a spin­ning top that isn’t quite ver­ti­cal. The stronger the mag­net­ic field, the faster the wobble.

Your pain med­i­cine and physi­a­try doc­tors are sole­ly focused on the eval­u­a­tion, treat­ment and pre­ven­tion of pain in order to help your body get back to a healthy and pain-free state. While both spe­cial­ties aim to iden­ti­fy and treat your pain, there are some impor­tant dif­fer­ences between them. Dr. Paul Man­ganel­li, Pain Med­i­cine, and Dr. Lena Shah­ban­dar, Physi­a­try, out­line key sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between the two pain spe­cial­ties to assist you in mak­ing informed deci­sions about your care.

A doc­tor may order a con­trast dye to be used dur­ing some MRI exams in order for the radi­ol­o­gist to bet­ter view inter­nal tis­sues and blood ves­sels on the com­plet­ed images. Con­trast mate­ri­als are not dyes that per­ma­nent­ly dis­col­or inter­nal organs. They are sub­stances that tem­porar­i­ly change the way MRIs, X‑rays or oth­er imag­ing tools inter­act with the body. Often, con­trast mate­ri­als allow the radi­ol­o­gist to dis­tin­guish nor­mal from abnor­mal conditions.