Darcy Lewis

Every day, nearly 1,000 Americans die from sudden cardiac arrest, a catastrophic event in which the heart suddenly stops functioning. The most common cause of sudden cardiac arrest is a sustained, super-fast heart rhythm called ventricular tachycardia, commonly called V-tach.
If ventricular tachycardia lasts for only a few seconds, the result may be a feeling of lightheadedness or breathlessness. Some people lose consciousness. But if ventricular tachycardia lasts longer than a few seconds, the heart may stop.

Even before Covid-19 reset life as we know it, I struggled with taming my sweet tooth and staying motivated to go to the gym as often as I should. Once the pandemic shutdowns arrived, I cocooned with my husband, our college-aged son and our three cats. While I was lucky to be able to do that, let’s just say staying at home 24/7 did not help me achieve my health goals.
I was far from alone in this.
If you were cooped up with your family for months on end, working from home while trying to home...

The first study to use an RNA-based chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (rCAR-T) therapy in autoimmune disease showed people with generalized myasthenia gravis tolerated the treatment well and experienced improvements in disease severity scales.

In the phase Ib/II MG-001 trial, no study-related serious adverse events or cases of dose-limiting toxicity, cytokine release syndrome, or neurotoxicity emerged in any of 14 participants, reported James Howard Jr., MD, of the ...

A small study finds no cancer recurrences after two years in patients who skipped breast surgery following a complete response to chemotherapy—but experts say the research is in its very early stages.
FOR YEARS, the standard of care for many women with early-stage triple-negative and HER2-positive breast cancers required chemotherapy to shrink the tumor, followed by surgery and often radiation therapy to destroy any cancer cells that survived.

New guideline stresses regular blood pressure checks during and after cancer treatment.
June 21, 2023
EMPHASIZING THE HIGH PREVALENCE of cancer therapy-induced high blood pressure among cancer survivors, a new guideline by the American Heart Association (AHA) encourages physicians to have patients monitor their own blood pressure at home to help people avoid heart problems down the road. The AHA statement, issued Jan. 9, 2023, in Hypertension, stresses the importance of physician monitoring a...

You know the famous air-travel analogy about putting on your own oxygen mask first so you can safely help others? For many women, this also applies when it comes to keeping up with preventive breast care. Screening mammography is the most effective tool for finding breast cancer in its early stages, yet many women find it difficult to access this potentially lifesaving test.
Amanda Boreen, R.N., a breast cancer nurse navigator at the Marshfield Clinic Health System in Weston, Wisconsin, sees ...

When a physician-scientist is closely identified with a particular landmark clinical trial, one might expect that study to top a personal list of meaningful accomplishments. Kevin Kalinsky, MD, MS, director of breast medical oncology at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, is grateful that his work on the RxPONDER trial has redefined clinical care for a large subset of women with breast cancer. But he's just getting started.

A return to Penn brings new beginnings for the new chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and director of the Scheie Eye Institute.

By Darcy Lewis

For Bennie H. Jeng, MD’98, the perspective he has on returning to Penn Medicine to lead the Department of Ophthalmology and the Scheie Eye Institute last year, nearly a quarter century after graduating from the Perelman School of Medicine, can be summed up in a single encounter from his student days.

Jeng and his eventual wife, Linda (Bone) Jeng,...

Every year, about 60% of international medical graduates (IMGs) go unmatched in the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP). The annual match process pairs medical graduates with compatible residency training programs that allow them to practice medicine in the United States.
Asim Ansari, MD, a Canadian who attended medical school in the Caribbean, is all too familiar with the match percentages. Ansari, who hopes to match into a psychiatry residency next week, saw the potential mental health benefits from using TwitterSpaces to talk about the anxiety of the match.

NOTE: ASJA NAMED THIS ARTICLE THE BEST TRADE ARTICLE IN ITS 2020 AWARDS CONTEST. It wasn't too many years years ago that the primary concerns related to pain management for patients with cancer revolved around whether they were getting adequate relief. Now, with the United States in the throes of an opioid epidemic, the use of these powerful and addictive pain relievers for patients with cancer is coming under unprecedented scrutiny.

Dr. Joel Blankson first learned about M.D.-Ph.D. programs as he was finishing college. Now a leading expert on HIV pathogenesis and a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine, he found the opportunity to create his own educational odyssey, culminating in both degrees—one in medicine, one in a laboratory science—irresistible.
“I applied to the Cornell/Rockefeller program because of the focus on applicants’ potential more than their experience,” said Dr. Blankson, who received his Ph.D f...

Faarina Khan, MD, MPH, always knew she'd have to overcome obstacles to achieve her dream career in medicine. As an American citizen who attended Dow Medical College in Karachi, Pakistan, she knew her status as an international medical graduate (IMG) would work against her as she sought residency training in the US.
But Kahn didn't expect to fail the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) four times.

Valbenazine (Ingrezza) calmed the involuntary, jerky movements associated with Huntington's disease, the phase III KINECT-HD trial showed.

In the 12-week double-blind trial, the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale Total Maximal Chorea (UHDRS TMC) scores decreased by 4.6 points with valbenazine and by 1.4 with placebo, a difference of 3.2 points on the 28-point scale (P<0.0001), reported Erin Furr Stimming, MD, of the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, and co-authors.