The University of Kansas Health System is treating a total of 58 COVID patients today, 53 Friday. Other significant numbers:
- 38 with the active virus today, 27 Friday
- 11 in ICU, 8 Friday
- 4 on a ventilator, 4 Friday
Key points from today’s guests:
Morning Rounds – Summary of Recent Headlines
Dr. Jeffrey Burns, neurologist, co-director, KU Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center
- The recent news about the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) with Bruce Willis has raised some questions about what that it and how it relates to his previous diagnosis of aphasia.
- Aphasia is a language problem that can be caused by a lot of different things -- stroke being the most common.
- FTD is actually a neurodegenerative disease. It's related to Alzheimer's disease, and aphasia can be one symptom of FTD.
- FTD affects the front parts of the brain, so we can see a lot of behavior and personality changes.
- It's a progressive disease that really strikes actually younger people than say the average person with Alzheimer's disease.
- The treatment of FTD is pretty limited. We try to help with some of these troublesome behaviors and we're working on developing new treatments.
Focus Topic – Clinical Trials
Dr. Ronald Chen, associate director of health equity, The University of Kansas Cancer Center
- Patients are presented with various options, including considering clinical trials and we have clinical trials available for many cancer diagnoses that are available.
- Clinical trials may not just be for treatment. There's also clinical trials looking at screenings for cancer.
- Phase one, two and three trials often are talking about treatment trials. Phase one is when a drug is being used in humans for the first time.
- Phase two, once a drug makes it through phase one and we understand that it is safe, we have a dose that we can use in patients. For phase two, we will take that drug and use it in a few more patients, maybe 50 to 100 patients.
- Phase three often is the last phase now that a drug is ready. Phase three is really comparing a new drug to a standard treatment to see this new drug can beat the standard treatment as a new standard of care.
- Improving overall equity is a very important initiative to make sure more diverse people have access to clinical trials.
Dinesh Pal Mudaranthakam, Ph. D., director of research IT, Kansas University Medical Center
- Recently launched an app (KUCC Clinical Trial Finder) which provides information for patients and their family members to match them up with clinical trials in their area.
- A physician would look at whether the patient would fit into the clinical trial or not, and a patient or a family member could express their interest if they want to participate in a clinical trial by just clicking on the app and signing up themselves for the clinical trial.
- Living in the rural location, they can even see if there is a location near to their house and find out if that is their best location to enroll in at that particular location, such as like Hayes or Topeka.
- There are two buttons that we recently added to the app, which is a game changer. Patients can either sign up to request more information, or they could also just send their interest in an email and our nurse navigator would directly engage with them and try to get them screened for the trial that they have expressed interest.
COVID Update
Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control, The University of Kansas Health System
- According to a recent Lancet article, researchers are looking into if the novel Coronavirus would rebound in patients after they got antiviral drugs for five days.
- We do know viral rebound happens – you have the illness, you get better, and then maybe 7-12 days later you start to have symptoms again – that’s a viral rebound.
- The early studies of Paxlovid showed that that did happen. This was one large, well-done study that showed that the amount of people who have that rebound with symptoms is about the same if you take Paxlovid or not.
- But the important thing about that is for those people that are at highest risk, Paxlovid continues to offer very good protection against hospitalization and death.
Spring Training Update
Dr. Vincent Key, orthopedic surgeon, The University of Kansas Health System
- Spring training physicals include orthopedic, oral, eye and heart screenings that are very thorough and comprehensive.
- Initially coming out of the offseason, athletes can get injuries sometimes by training too much during the offseason, and then they're a little fatigued.
- So it's a matter of management once these players get here in terms of not trying to ramp up too much too fast too soon.
- Whether it be from a high school perspective, college perspective, or even the professional ranks, if you try to go from zero to 100 and if your body's not ready for it, injuries can happen.
Tuesday, February 21 is the next Morning Medical Update. It was a Christmas rush like no other. Doctors at the health system performed four heart transplants in just 36 hours. You’ll meet the doctor who helped pull off the holiday feat, plus one woman who got the special Christmas gift of life.
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