Health Report

THE GOOD NEWS

A new blood test to detect prostate cancer in its very earliest stages works far better than old-fashioned, unpleasant rectal examinations. In a recent study the newer method, called a prostate-specific antigen test, detected almost twice as many tumors as a manual exam.

When a mother has Rh-negative blood and her fetus has Rh-positive (thanks to the father), the baby can actually be allergic to the mother, with health problems ranging from anemia to death. But a test that uses biotechnology to detect key proteins in the tiniest samples of blood can now determine the child's Rh status in the first trimester rather than the third, and allow for the earliest possible treatment.

THE BAD NEWS

An expensive, much prescribed blood test that detects the recurrence of colorectal cancer in people who have had surgery for the disease actually makes little difference in medium-term survival. Those who don't undergo the test are almost as healthy a year after surgery a those who do.

Blacks of both sexes and all ages suffer cardiac arrest at rates significantly higher than their white counterparts, according to a new study. Not only that: when the heart stoppage occurs outside a hospital, blacks survive the episode only one-third as often as whites. Another study indicates that whites are more than twice as likely to have expensive bypass surgery as blacks.

[TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: GOOD: Journal of the American Medical Association (first), New England Journal of Medicine (second); BAD: J.A.M.A. (first), N.E.J.M. (second)}]