Group items tagged

"More than three-quarters of healthcare executives believe their industry's most valuable asset is going to be information contained in electronic medical records...hundreds of billions of gigabytes of health and medical information will be industry's most valuable asset in 5 years. The value, however, must be unlocked by finding ways to overcome a lack of standards, privacy concerns, and technology limitations that could hinder use of the data." || NOTE: This data has already been used by private medical insurance companies to dig up "preexisting conditions" that allow them to drop coverage (rescission) on potentially unprofitable subscribers. ||

There is reasonable evidence that the use of imiquimod for small (<2 cm) superficial BCC that occur other than on the face provides outcomes only marginally less satisfactory than surgery. There would be a place for imiquimod in treating patients with frequent multiple primary lesions when access to surgery is difficult or where clinical judgment may be influenced by patient factors as reported in some of the studies, eg, where patients may have contraindications to surgery.  It was noted that if recurrences occurred in this study they mostly occurred during the first 9 months after the end of treatment. The initial response was therefore predictive of long-term outcome so these authors recommend and encourage continued monitoring of skin lesions.