![Mayo Clinic home page [logo]](/images-global/mayologo.gif)
Discover how you can help support Mayo Clinic.
View syndicated health information from Mayo Clinic.
If you've ever been in the hospital, you know that it's usually not much fun. You may have to take medicine that makes you feel lousy, have tests and are no doubt a little anxious about being there. Doctors at Mayo are working on making the hospital experience easier for patients and their families.
Resource: Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Every year more than 21-thousand people in the U.S. are diagnosed with brain cancer. Unfortunately, many of those people will die within a year of diagnosis. But Mayo Clinic doctors are hopeful that a chemotherapy drug approved to fight other types of cancer, may help people with brain cancer live longer, fuller lives.
Resource: Brain Tumors
For many years, doctors have been using the vibrations of ultrasound to diagnose and even treat many conditions. Now research shows that the vibrations of a harp may help improve the condition of people nearing the end of life.
Let's go to Mayo Clinic to learn how one woman is being proactive in preventing breast cancer -- the disease that took her mother's life.
Resource: Treatment of Breast Cancer
Can a pregnant woman get the lifesaving chemotherapy she needs without harming her unborn child? Doctors at Mayo Clinic have the answers.
Resource: Treatment of Breast Cancer
He was young, in college, with a great girlfriend and a future career. But then he got hit with a potentially deadly cancer. The chances of beating the disease were fair, but only if he had surgery and heavy doses of chemotherapy - a treatment with many side effects including the possibility of becoming sterile.
Ask just about any of the 8 million people who're addicted to smokeless tobacco and they'll likely tell you: it's harder to quit chewing than it is to quit smoking.
Resource: Nicotine Dependence Center
Imagine standing in a room with eight female friends or family members. Statistics show that one of them will get breast cancer in her lifetime
Resource: Treatment of Breast Cancer
For thousands of years, practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine have used the herb ginseng to increase energy, endurance and brain power. Research shows that in many cases, the herb may help. Researchers at Mayo Clinic led a study with ginseng and found it may also help fight fatigue in cancer patients.
Resource: Cancer Treatment at Mayo Clinic
Cover up and use sunscreen to protect yourself from skin cancer. Sound familiar? Those words of warning should be taken seriously because a certain type of skin cancer called malignant melanoma can kill. How can a tiny mole on you shoulder or leg be so deadly?
Resource: Treatment of Melanoma
Every year, 1 million people in the United States are diagnosed with basal cell or squamous cell carcinomas. Skin cancer. These non-melanoma skin cancers usually don't kill, but they can destroy tissue if they're not removed.
Resource: Treatment of Skin Cancer
Doctors at Mayo Clinic did a study to find out if giving women information before they have a mammogram makes a difference in their experience.
Resource: Mammography Screening
You're at the doctor's office and he or she tells you there's a tiny spot in your lung. It could be cancer. To find out, your options have been to wait and see if it grows or go to surgery for a biopsy. Now there's another option.
Resource: Treatment of Lung Cancer
Every day, doctors use ultrasound, CT scans and MRIs to see inside the body without making an incision. Those tests are great at showing size and structure, but they don't show important physical properties such as tissue stiffness, which, for example, is a sign of fibrosis in the liver. But researchers at Mayo Clinic have developed technology that uses sound waves to see if a patient's liver is harder than it should be — if it's developing fibrosis. It's called Magnetic Resonance Elastography, and it offers a noninvasive alternative to liver biopsy.
Resource: Treatment of Liver Disease
Research shows nicotine replacement therapy helps. But which type works best? The patch, nasal spray, nicotine gum?
Resource: Stop Smoking
Brain cancer is one of the most common cancers in children, second only to leukemia. But unlike leukemia, the genes that cause pediatric brain cancer continue to be somewhat of a mystery to researchers. They don't know why some tumors just don't respond to treatment. Doctors at Mayo Clinic are working hard to find the genes responsible for tumor growth in hopes of one day finding an easier cure for patients like the 15-year-old you're about to meet.
Resource: Treatment of Pediatric Brain Tumors
Occasional heartburn is usually nothing to worry about. But if heartburn hits two or more times a week, you may be at risk of developing a condition called Barrett's esophagus that increases your risk of cancer.
Resource: Treatment with Photodynamic Therapy
Occasional heartburn after a big meal is usually nothing to worry about. But if you get heartburn a lot, say, once a week, it could damage your esophagus and in rare cases, cause cancer.
Resource: Treatment of Heartburn
Swollen glands. If you've ever had a bad cold, you've probably had them. Those tender little glands under your jaw are a sign that the white blood cells in your lymph nodes are working to fight the infection. So most of the time swollen glands are a good thing. But if they don't hurt and don't go away, they could be a sign of something more serious.
Resource: Treatment of Cancer
Remember the story "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer?" When bad weather almost stopped Santa from delivering gifts on Christmas Eve? Well, the same thing almost happened to the Santa you're about to meet. But instead of dealing with bad weather, this Santa faced an even bigger problem. Throat cancer. And just as the legendary light from that story guided Santa through the storm, a laser light helped this Santa weather the storm of cancer. More from Mayo Clinic.
Resource: Throat Cancer Treatment at Mayo Clinic
Research has shown that for some cancers, screening for early detection most definitely saves lives. Examples are mammograms for breast cancer and colonoscopy for colon cancer. But not all cancers have screening tools that have been proven to work. Let's go to Mayo Clinic to learn more about screening for lung cancer.
Resource: Treatment of Lung Cancer
In the spring of 2006 the National Cancer Institute released initial results of the STAR trial for breast cancer prevention. The study compared the drug tamoxifen to another drug called raloxifene. Both reduced the incidence of invasive breast cancer by 50 percent in high-risk postmenopausal women.
Resource: Treatment of Breast Cancer
If you have kidney cancer, you might not get symptoms until it's rather advanced. Not long ago a diagnosis like that was bad news. But now, thanks to technology, teamwork and medical expertise, people are beating this deadly disease.
Resource: Treatment of Kidney Cancer
Ten years ago, 48,000 women -- mothers, wives, sisters -- died every year from breast cancer. Today, that number has dropped to 40,000. But it's still too high. That's why many women who are at high risk of getting breast cancer choose genetic testing.
Resource: Breast Cancer Risk Assessment
Wouldn't it be great to go to a doctor who makes you feel relaxed, who really listens to you, and answered all your questions? Research shows that people who go to doctors who have good bedside manners get more from office visits than those who don't. Mayo Clinic is taking that information seriously. They're teaching residents and med students how to communicate with patients.
For many years, doctors have been using the vibrations of ultrasound to diagnose and even treat many conditions. Now research shows that the vibrations of a harp may help improve the condition of people nearing the end of life.
.
