A case report of pseudoaneurysm after a core needle biopsy of breast cancer

Breast pseudoaneurysms after a core needle biopsy are a rare complication with a low incidence. However, it is important to be aware of the possibility of complications that require treatment.     

Oligometastatic prostate cancer: Reality or figment of imagination?

The term “oligometastatic prostate cancer” refers to a heterogeneous group of disease states currently defined solely on the basis of clinical features. Oligorecurrent disease, de novo oligometastases, and oligoprogressive disease likely have unique biologic underpinnings and natural histories. Evidence suggesting the existence of a subset of patients who harbor prostate cancer with limited metastatic potential currently includes disparate and overwhelmingly retrospective reports. Nevertheless, emerging prospective data have corroborated the “better-than-expected,” retrospectively observed outcomes, particularly in the setting of oligorecurrent prostate cancer. Improved functional imaging with prostate-specific membrane antigen-targeted strategies may enhance the identification of patients with oligometastatic prostate cancer in the short term. In the long term, refinement of the oligometastatic case definition likely will require biologic risk-stratification schemes. To determine optimal treatment strategies and identify patients most likely to benefit from metastasis-directed therapy, future efforts should focus on conducting high-quality, prospective trials with much-needed molecular correlative studies.     

The impact of neighborhoods and friendships on interracial anxiety among medical students and residents: A report from the medical student CHANGES study

Objective

To examine the experience of interracial anxiety among health professionals and how it may affect the quality of their interactions with patients from racially marginalized populations. We explored the influence of prior interracial exposure—specifically through childhood neighborhoods, college student bodies, and friend groups—on interracial anxiety among medical students and residents. We also examined whether levels of interracial anxiety change from medical school through residency.

Data Source

Web-based longitudinal survey data from the Medical Student Cognitive Habits and Growth Evaluation Study.

Study Design

We used a retrospective longitudinal design with four observations for each trainee. The study population consisted of non-Black US medical trainees surveyed in their 1st and 4th years of medical school and 2nd and 3rd years of residency. Mixed effects longitudinal models were used to assess predictors of interracial anxiety and assess changes in interracial anxiety scores over time.

Principal Findings

In total, 3155 non-Black medical trainees were followed for 7 years. Seventy-eight percent grew up in predominantly White neighborhoods. Living in predominantly White neighborhoods and having less racially diverse friends were associated with higher levels of interracial anxiety among medical trainees. Trainees' interracial anxiety scores did not substantially change over time; interracial anxiety was highest in the 1st year of medical school, lowest in the 4th year, and increased slightly during residency.

Conclusions

Neighborhood and friend group composition had independent effects on interracial anxiety, indicating that premedical racial socialization may affect medical trainees' preparedness to interact effectively with diverse patient populations. Additionally, the lack of substantial change in interracial anxiety throughout medical training suggests the importance of providing curricular tools and structure (e.g., instituting interracial cooperative learning activities) to foster the development of healthy interracial relationships.     

Constructing queer mother‐knowledge and negotiating medical authority in online lesbian pregnancy journals

Medical interactions around reproduction are increasingly extending beyond the physician's office and onto the Internet, where negotiation with medical authority occurs in complex and dynamic ways. Recently, scholars have noted the Internet's potential for creating spaces where women can dialogue with and reconstruct medical authority, yet this growing body of work is overwhelming heteronormative. This paper thus interrogates how lesbian women use the Internet to challenge, deploy, and rework medical authority around reproduction while navigating the transition to parenthood. I draw from 17 online journals authored by lesbian couples during the conception, pregnancy, and birth of their first child, each spanning between 18 months and 2 years, in order to understand how the transition process unfolds over time. I argue that lesbian couples engage with medical authority when seeking affirmation and normalisation yet discard and publicly reject the heteronormative assumptions that accompany reproductive medicine. Further, they chart a new process that I term ‘constructing queer mother‐knowledge’, in which they critique and balance knowledges from institutionalised medicine, their own bodies, and their queer communities. With this new concept, I complicate understandings of lesbian mothers‐to‐be and their interactions with medical authority as they build subversive families.