The University of Kansas Health System is treating a total of 48 COVID patients today, up from 35 Friday. Other significant numbers:
- 28 with the active virus today, 17 Friday
- 5 in ICU, 2 Friday
- 2 on a ventilator, same as Friday
- 20 hospitalized but out of acute infection phase, 18 Friday
Key points from today’s guests:
Melanie Beck, Breast Cancer Patient
- Diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, she was a candidate for a double mastectomy with removal of about a third of her lymph nodes. This meant about a 30 to 40 percent chance of developing swelling in my arm after the surgery. She learned of a proactive procedure that could take those swelling chances from 40 percent down to single digits.
- She found her breast cancer very early on about two years ago, but it was dismissed by other doctors until she arrived at The University of Kansas Health System for a second opinion, where they found advanced breast cancer.
- Loved that the Cancer Center has a specific protocol they take you through and keeps you updated on the progress of testing and treatment.
Dr. Lyndsey Kilgore, breast surgeon, The University of Kansas Cancer Center
- The procedure Melanie had is called immediate lymphovenous reconstruction or lymphovenous bypass (also called lympha).
- This is a procedure done in combination with plastic surgeons like Dr. Eric Lai, who we are so fortunate to have as part of our cancer team.
- When we remove all the lymph nodes, we team with our microvascular fellowship trained plastic surgeons and they are able to reconnect those vessels. So, we are able to map out which lymph nodes drain the arm to hopefully avoid those. And then they're able to save them and reconnect them to hopefully try to prevent lymphedema from happening in the future.
- Our research is really focused on early intervention and prevention of lymphedema because we know that when you get to the chronic lymphedema stages, it's really hard to reverse. Early detection truly is key.
- We have special technology here where we can detect it at the subclinical level -- meaning before patients develop that swelling, we can actually intervene early teaching them home directed measures like self-massage, compression and things and actually reverse the lymphedema -- to prevent it from becoming that chronic painful stage that some women get to.
- We can offer them hope -- hope that they're not going to have this debilitating disease and side effect of their cancer treatment as a constant reminder of everything that they went through. So we're really hoping to establish a protocol for women all across the country, not just here.
- We really think that we have the most amazing comprehensive cancer program and with our recent NCI designation for being comprehensive and our cancer care, we can offer patients a team approach to treating our cancer patients -- not just breast cancer patients.
Dr. Eric Lai, plastic surgeon, The University of Kansas Cancer Center
- Immediate lymphatic reconstruction benefits those who have to know that they're going to need to remove a fair number of their lymph nodes. It is providing a bypass -- working around the roadblock and getting plugged into a nearby blood vessel.
- We're hoping to avoid a buildup of traffic or adults of lymph in this case that would result in the lymphatic in resulted in lymphedema or that sort of swollen upper extremity. So we use a use a microscope to identify a nearby tiny blood vessel -- about a millimeter in width, sometimes as much as two millimeters if we're lucky -- and then hand sew those together to create our bypass.
- There are different surgeries tailored to different stages of where you are in the edema.
- For some people who have profound lymphedema who've had who've had this for a number of years or it's chronic and they have an enlarged limb and so forth, we may offer some other debulking techniques like using our power-assisted liposuction to help them with their quality of life.
Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control, The University of Kansas Health System
- On the recent news about the Boston University study about COVID virus testing, this was a headline that was taken totally out of context, which we have seen throughout the pandemic.
- They took the Omicron spike and put it on to the original Wuhan isolate or the Washington isolate to see about infection and entry into the cells.
- Basically, they were asking the question, does the spike alter the severity of the virus? A lot of people were up in arms about the headlines, but I think this was just a matter of a headline resulting in the research being misconstrued in the media.
- Overall, the conclusion of that research was that the spike protein did not really have an effect on the severity of disease, and there were probably other genes within that virus that had an effect on severity of disease.
- This is why we need to understand exactly what these studies mean. We know people read headlines, so we need to go beyond the headline and really dig into the actual meaning.
Tuesday, October 25 at 8:00 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. The family of a child born with health problems finds out she needs brain surgery at the age of two. Her recovery was a team effort between the health system and Children's Mercy Hospital. We'll take a look at the surgery and how little Kolbie is doing now.
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