Personal Health: Chemo brain, stem cells and more

Study: 'Chemo brain' may not go away for cancer patients

Chemotherapy patients have long complained of the mental fog that tends to accompany treatment. Now, a new study suggests that certain combinations of chemo drugs may have long-term effects on cognition.

Researchers looked at 196 women who had been treated for early-stage breast cancer with a three-drug chemotherapy regimen. The women underwent cognition testing an average of 21 years after they had received chemo. They were compared with 1,509 healthy women who had never had cancer. The women in the study ranged in age from 50 to 80.

The women who had chemotherapy fared much worse than the control group on tests of verbal memory, cognitive processing speed, executive function, and psychomotor speed.

Previous studies suggested that "chemo brain" can persist for five years after treatment, but this study is the first to show possible permanent cognitive damage.

- Los Angeles Times

More Americans are turning to the emergency room for routine dental problems - a choice that often costs 10 times more than preventive care and offers far fewer treatment options than a dentist's office, according to an analysis of government data and dental research.

Most of those emergency visits involve trouble such as toothaches that could have been avoided with regular checkups but went untreated, in many cases because of a shortage of dentists, particularly those willing to treat Medicaid patients, the analysis said.

The number of E.R. visits nationwide for dental problems increased 16 percent from 2006 to 2009, and the report released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States suggests the trend is continuing.

Emergency rooms generally can offer pain relief and medicine for infected gums but not much more for dental patients. And many patients are unable to find or afford follow-up treatment, so they end up back in the emergency room.

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Personal Health: Chemo brain, stem cells and more