Latest news with #MassGeneral
CBS News
5 days ago
- Health
- CBS News
Massachusetts high school baseball player celebrates end of radiation treatment with teammates
The baseball field at North Reading High School has been getting a lot of use this season. They've made it to the playoffs after all. But their inspiration to play better and practice harder has come from a teammate who was not on the field this year. Brady Cullen is a 16-year-old sophomore at NRHS who would normally be finishing a spring season in his position on third base. Last August, he and his family got a devastating diagnosis of a brain tumor (pilocytic astrocytoma.) The non-cancerous tumor was too close to his brain stem to be operated on. After months of appointments, his medical team at Mass General Hospital recommended radiation to stop it from growing. Brady rings bell after six weeks of radiation This week, Brady finished his 30th session. Six weeks of radiation, five days a week. When Brady rang the bell in the halls of MGH he wasn't alone. "It was unbelievable. It was hard not to just break down right there in the hospital," Brady recalled. When he turned around, he found his entire baseball team lining up in the halls. Cheering him on as he left his last appointment in his months-long battle. North Reading sophomore Brady Cullen is greeted by his baseball teammates after completing treatment at Mass General Brigham. Mass General Brigham "They are my brothers and to see that combined with my family, it was so special," he said. "It just made me realize I am at peace with myself. I am at peace with my journey. I am where I want to be I am where I need to be and that will never change." Team makes trip to Boston Eric Archambault is the head coach of the North Reading High School baseball team. Coach Arch, as he's called, said it wasn't a question of whether the team would make the trip to Boston on Thursday. He said Brady never missed school and rarely missed practice or games as a team manager during his treatments. "We are seeing a kid with our very eyes attack a situation that nobody wishes for, and he takes it head on every single day," said Archambault. "Everyone wasn't supporting Brady just because of the diagnosis. We are supporting Brady because of who he is. He has touched everyone on the team throughout the years, and we look up to him." Brady said he plans to work with a physical therapist and get back out on the field. Overwhelmed and thankful for the army of support he had from his team and community. "Life is the most precious and beautiful thing, and it can be taken away so fast and I want them to realize that, embrace hardships because hardships build your character and they build who you are, and they make you stronger than ever," Brady said. "I know for damn sure I am stronger than ever from this. I am proud to say I came out on top with a whole new perspective on live and a new appreciation for it."
Medscape
13-05-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Good News and Sobering News on Cardiac Risks in Marathoners
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Michelle L. O'Donoghue, MD, MPH: Hi. I am Dr Michelle O'Donoghue, reporting for Medscape. Joining me today is Dr Aaron Baggish. He's a professor of medicine at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and is the former director of the Massachusetts General Hospital's Cardiovascular Performance Program. Thanks for joining me, Dr Baggish. Aaron L. Baggish, MD: Michelle, it's a real pleasure. Thank you for having me. SCD in Endurance Events O'Donoghue: You've been at the forefront of focusing on athletes and both their ability to participate in competitive sports as well as better understanding outcomes for athletes who may have underlying cardiac conditions that could put them at increased risk for sudden cardiac death during participation sports. Baggish: This has been a 20-year journey for me, but it's really only been in the past 10 years that the field of sports cardiology has firmly gelled. We're now seeing this as an accepted part of the entire cardiovascular offering, if you will, from a high-level service provider, like where you work at Brigham and Women's Hospital or Mass General. It's been really fun to be a part of that. O'Donoghue: I'd like to talk a little bit more about that journey over time, but most recently, focusing in on some of the data that you presented at the American College of Cardiology and focusing on the incidence of sudden cardiac arrest in people participating in long-distance running — mostly, of course, marathons, but also half-marathons, so those types of endurance events. Would you tell us a little bit more about that? Baggish: I'd be pleased to. At this year's American College of Cardiology (ACC) meeting, we had the opportunity to present the RACER 2 data, which are a look at cardiac arrest incidence and survival rates over the past 13 years in the United States. Before delving into those data, it's worth sharing the background for this. In 2012, we published the first RACER study, which very much set the benchmark for what was happening for the first decade of the century in the United States. That provided some baseline incidence statistics. We were at that point able to establish that the survival rate for runners that had cardiac arrest on the course was roughly 30%.Importantly, we learned about why people lived and why they died. One of the most important things being that most of these events occur very late in the race, within sight of the finish line. After RACER was published, as I think you know, I was fortunate enough to be working in the capacity as medical director for the Boston Marathon and tried hard with colleagues all over the country to take some of what we learned in RACER and translate it into better rationale for doing the RACER 2 study was to see if that work had made a difference. O'Donoghue: What were the topline findings that you presented? Baggish: There was both a sobering story and a good news story. The sobering story was that the actual incidence of cardiac arrest over the past 20 years really hasn't changed much. Most specifically, for the highest-risk group who are men who run the marathon distance, which is 26.2 miles or 42 kilometers, depending on which system you use, roughly 1 in 100 runners will succumb to cardiac arrest. This, as maybe we'll talk about later, is a wake-up call for us to think about more in the primary prevention space. The really exciting finding in RACER 2 is that we had essentially seen a 50% improvement in survival. Back with the first study, that was a 30% survival rate. Now, we see a 70% survival rate. This can really be attributed to a small list of important interventions. O'Donoghue: What kind of interventions are we talking about?Is it about availability of defibrillators or other? Baggish: It's two things. What we learned from RACER is that immediate bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and timely access to external defibrillation were perfect predictors of survival. What we did after RACER is make a concerted effort to make certain that those two things were available in as many race circumstances as possible. When we looked at our predictors of survival in RACER 2, there was now almost uniform application of defibrillators and CPR. This translated into much better outcomes. From HCM to CAD and a Paradigm Shift in Guidelines O'Donoghue: Many people think to themselves that it's people who perhaps have underlying conditions such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy who succumb to these types of events during a long-distance race. What did you actually observe? Baggish: In RACER 2, it was very interesting, and this represented a shift from RACER in which hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was indeed the most common finding either at autopsy after death or on clinical evaluation after survival. We saw a shift in RACER 2, and some of this shift may be due to the way evaluations are done now or the way autopsies are clearly, the dominant cause of cardiac arrest is simple atherosclerotic coronary disease among typically older athletes. O'Donoghue: That is perhaps just a nice segue as we think about the participation of people who might have underlying cardiac conditions such as hypertrophic so long, there used to be somewhat of a blanket recommendation for many people to not participate in competitive sports. How has that changed over the past several years? How are we thinking about that now? Baggish: This is a really exciting paradigm shift in the way we care for active many decades, based largely on appropriate concern about pushing the body hard with an underlying heart problem, the approach has been to limit and take away competitive sport participation from all people that have that condition. Quite frankly, this was an understandable but old-school approach, which was really based in paternalisticmedicine. What's happened over the past decade is there have been data series showing that exercise is actually much safer than we expected among people that have this condition, including relatively high levels of competitive exercise. While the risk is not zero, and certainly there is still a risk assessment situation that needs to occur every time the diagnosis is made, we've moved away fromlimiting people universally and have entered into an era where shared decision-making between the doctor and the patient has become the recommended practice. O'Donoghue: That is actually an important shift, as you phrase it, from that former paternalistic approach, but for many people it was really devastating to be told that in fact they could never participate in any type of competitive sport in their done a nice job of also highlighting how that could lead to depression and have many consequences that perhaps the physician at the time was not always keeping in mind. Baggish: As you highlight, Michelle, shared decision-making is not about unchecked autonomy. It's not telling every person to go forth and do whatever they want without thought and consideration. I think the part of the equation that's been missing for so many years is the downside of taking physical activity away from people after a cardiac diagnosis. This can have not only health implications but also have social, academic, and occupational implications. We now see both sides of the equation. What we do with the patient athlete when a new diagnosis is established is work with them and often times other people that are important to them — whether it's family members, teammates, coaches, administrators — whoever it is to come up with the right decision that balances both their medical risk and their personal preferences and values. O'Donoghue: As we think about shared decision-making, I know that one area of your research has been looking at survival rates, not only for long-distance runners but also, for instance, for youth participating in competitive sports who may unfortunately have a sudden cardiac death, albeit very rare. If a defibrillator, for instance, is available, where somebody is participating in a sport and somebody does receive an appropriate shock, do we know the survival rates for those individuals and perhaps this puts more of a focus even on the pediatric population? Higher Risks in Underserved Populations Baggish: Also presented at the recent ACC meeting was a look at what happens in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The focus of that paper, which I also had the privilege of being involved in, was a clear documentation of the fact that survival rates have improved in that population as well.I personally don't think that has anything to do with more effectively screening people out of sport who have heart conditions. What it has to do with is having robust emergency action plans. In colleges and universities — and this is trickling down into high school and youth sports, as it should— it's now become clear that if you are going to oversee young people participating in sport, or even older people for that matter, that the most important thing you can do is have a well-developed and rehearsed emergency action plan, which again, is about two simple things. It's immediate CPR and access to a defibrillator, ideally within 3 minutes of collapse. O'Donoghue: If I'm correct, one of the observations in that particular analysis that was done was that race appeared to be a predictor of worse survival. Is part of that related to perhaps lack of either defibrillator access or education on the front of that type of emergency action plan you're talking about, including CPR? Baggish: I think so. I want to be clear that we have many unanswered questions about the impact of social determinants of health, structural racism, all of the terms that we're now more familiar with as they translate into outcomes and athletes. What I see is the next 5-10 years of very important work is to better understand why this is what we're seeing and also figure out ways to reduce those care gaps. I don't think it has anything to do with the intrinsic biology of how people self-report their race. I think it has to do with the environments in which they live and practice sport, and some insufficiencies in some places where people from typically underserved populations tend to be. O'Donoghue: Thanks for highlighting these important points. As you say, there's the good news aspect of this that, for people who have this type of complication, either during youth competitive sports or endurance athletes, fortunately, it does appear that overall survival is improving. Hopefully, as we continue to have cost reduced for things like defibrillator access and continuing to work on education, that we can continue to improve those rates even further. Baggish: I'm hopeful that will represent the future. I think there's still a large amount of science to be done to help us understand this issue of racial disparities and how they translate it to differential is not unique to sports cardiology. This is across all aspects of cardiovascular medicine. I'm excited to see where that goes in the next 5-10 years. O'Donoghue: Thanks again for joining me today. Signing off for Medscape, this is Dr Michelle O'Donoghue.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Opinion - Why is Massachusetts spending taxpayer money to demonize pregnancy help clinics?
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) is running a massive taxpayer-funded public relations campaign to warn citizens about the dangers of pregnancy help clinics. Healy is claiming that this is necessary because people who run these clinics have 'a pro-life and religious bias.' There are some flaws to this thinking. For one thing, approximately half the country has a pro-life bias. And a 2023 Gallup poll says that 82 percent of Americans identify as religious or spiritual. And when it comes to helping young women facing unexpected pregnancies, politicians should avoid getting themselves on the wrong side of yet another 80/20 issue. Pregnancy help clinics are good for America, especially for politicians committed to defending legal abortion. It is true — there is a clear and present pro-life and religious bias at work in the nearly 3,000 pregnancy help services operating across the U.S.. This same bias prompted the Rev. John Barlett (1784–1849) to found Mass General Hospital, one of the oldest hospitals in America today. He was a pro-life Christian who wanted to save lives in the name of Jesus. Was he dangerous? Even now, there are medical professionals working at Mass General who are motivated by a love of life and a Christian worldview. Should we warn people about this? In fact, nearly all of the hospitals and clinics in the world today that are more than 100 years old were started by people with a pro-life and religious biases. Such bias drove the medical missionary, Dr. Alexander Pearson, to leave the comforts of home and introduce the smallpox vaccine to China in 1805. By 1901, medical missionaries in China were operating 128 hospitals and 245 dispensaries. They recorded 1,674,571 people treated, out of the same bias of Christian care that motivates people to set up pregnancy help clinics and provide testing, ultrasound and practical support for expectant mothers. I led the effort to establish ultrasound-equipped, medically-staffed pregnancy help centers in the Boston area starting in 1992. As a Baptist pastor in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, I heard many tearful testimonies of my people, saying, 'I regret my abortion.' As they told me of their lived experience, they also indicated what kind of help, if offered, would have saved their baby. We decided to offer this help. We started with nothing more than neighborly love and the paradigm of the good Samaritan — draw near and provide practical help. The first to join the effort were those who had their own abortion story. Such people are not judgmental. They are sympathetic and knowledgeable, knowing the stress, the sense of panic and the unclear thinking that attends crisis. The principle that makes any medical treatment ethical is so foundational that it is called the doctrine of informed consent. The comprehensive abortion training textbook 'A Clinician's Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortion' states that informed consent 'must include three elements.' Patients must have the capacity to make decisions; their decisions must be without coercion; and patients must be given appropriate information germane to their decision. 'The goal of the informed consent,' the textbook says, 'is to protect individual autonomy by providing information on the procedure, risks, and alternatives to the medical intervention being considered.' And it provides a list of 14 negative after-abortion reactions that must be screened for prior to abortion, including the two I heard most often, 'significant ambivalence' and 'perceived coercion.' It is an 80/20 issue that this advice on pre-abortion screening, for negative reactions to abortion, is good for women. Even the National Abortion Federation says so — its logo is stamped right on the cover of 'The Clinician's Guide.' Abortion advocates can be confident, even thankful, that every woman who seeks an abortion after visiting a pregnancy help center has been informed about the abortion procedures and risks, just as abortion trainers teach. If in the process a mother or couple decides, in spite of difficult circumstances, to have their baby, why not just be glad? Or at least be neutral? Their choice doesn't alter the legal status of abortion in any way. Pregnancy help services are spreading worldwide without controversy. In China, a few public hospitals are now offering pregnancy help counseling services and support. In Vietnam, too, hospitals are experimenting with 'counseling corners' for women prior to abortion. In hard places, like Cuba and Uganda, my organization equips doctors with a hand-held ultrasound to help young mothers see their unborn children. Volunteers help new mothers follow their hearts and their true values and give life. Even abortion doctors welcome the services of pregnancy help clinics, if for no other reason than that they help women who are ambivalent or feeling pressured by others. One such abortion doctor in Romania told me of his deep frustration that he did not have such a clinic nearby. 'Some women are weeping and shaking when I start the process,' he said. 'I welcome you to open a [clinic] next to me. I would send these women to you to sort out.' John Ensor is a speaker, author, and president of PassionLife. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
The Hill
06-05-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Why is Massachusetts spending taxpayer money to demonize pregnancy help clinics?
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) is running a massive taxpayer-funded public relations campaign to warn citizens about the dangers of pregnancy help clinics. Healy is claiming that this is necessary because people who run these clinics have 'a pro-life and religious bias.' There are some flaws to this thinking. For one thing, approximately half the country has a pro-life bias. And a 2023 Gallup poll says that 82 percent of Americans identify as religious or spiritual. And when it comes to helping young women facing unexpected pregnancies, politicians should avoid getting themselves on the wrong side of yet another 80/20 issue. Pregnancy help clinics are good for America, especially for politicians committed to defending legal abortion. It is true — there is a clear and present pro-life and religious bias at work in the nearly 3,000 pregnancy help services operating across the U.S.. This same bias prompted the Rev. John Barlett (1784–1849) to found Mass General Hospital, one of the oldest hospitals in America today. He was a pro-life Christian who wanted to save lives in the name of Jesus. Was he dangerous? Even now, there are medical professionals working at Mass General who are motivated by a love of life and a Christian worldview. Should we warn people about this? In fact, nearly all of the hospitals and clinics in the world today that are more than 100 years old were started by people with a pro-life and religious biases. Such bias drove the medical missionary, Dr. Alexander Pearson, to leave the comforts of home and introduce the smallpox vaccine to China in 1805. By 1901, medical missionaries in China were operating 128 hospitals and 245 dispensaries. They recorded 1,674,571 people treated, out of the same bias of Christian care that motivates people to set up pregnancy help clinics and provide testing, ultrasound and practical support for expectant mothers. I led the effort to establish ultrasound-equipped, medically-staffed pregnancy help centers in the Boston area starting in 1992. As a Baptist pastor in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, I heard many tearful testimonies of my people, saying, 'I regret my abortion.' As they told me of their lived experience, they also indicated what kind of help, if offered, would have saved their baby. We decided to offer this help. We started with nothing more than neighborly love and the paradigm of the good Samaritan — draw near and provide practical help. The first to join the effort were those who had their own abortion story. Such people are not judgmental. They are sympathetic and knowledgeable, knowing the stress, the sense of panic and the unclear thinking that attends crisis. The principle that makes any medical treatment ethical is so foundational that it is called the doctrine of informed consent. The comprehensive abortion training textbook 'A Clinician's Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortion' states that informed consent 'must include three elements.' Patients must have the capacity to make decisions; their decisions must be without coercion; and patients must be given appropriate information germane to their decision. 'The goal of the informed consent,' the textbook says, 'is to protect individual autonomy by providing information on the procedure, risks, and alternatives to the medical intervention being considered.' And it provides a list of 14 negative after-abortion reactions that must be screened for prior to abortion, including the two I heard most often, 'significant ambivalence' and 'perceived coercion.' It is an 80/20 issue that this advice on pre-abortion screening, for negative reactions to abortion, is good for women. Even the National Abortion Federation says so — its logo is stamped right on the cover of 'The Clinician's Guide.' Abortion advocates can be confident, even thankful, that every woman who seeks an abortion after visiting a pregnancy help center has been informed about the abortion procedures and risks, just as abortion trainers teach. If in the process a mother or couple decides, in spite of difficult circumstances, to have their baby, why not just be glad? Or at least be neutral? Their choice doesn't alter the legal status of abortion in any way. Pregnancy help services are spreading worldwide without controversy. In China, a few public hospitals are now offering pregnancy help counseling services and support. In Vietnam, too, hospitals are experimenting with 'counseling corners' for women prior to abortion. In hard places, like Cuba and Uganda, my organization equips doctors with a hand-held ultrasound to help young mothers see their unborn children. Volunteers help new mothers follow their hearts and their true values and give life. Even abortion doctors welcome the services of pregnancy help clinics, if for no other reason than that they help women who are ambivalent or feeling pressured by others. One such abortion doctor in Romania told me of his deep frustration that he did not have such a clinic nearby. 'Some women are weeping and shaking when I start the process,' he said. 'I welcome you to open a [clinic] next to me. I would send these women to you to sort out.'
CNBC
03-05-2025
- Health
- CNBC
Brain health experts' top 3 tips for lowering your risk of dementia, stroke and depression—all at the same time
There are certain lifestyle choices that can lower your risk of developing dementia, stroke and depression later in life, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. "At least 60% of stroke, 40% of dementia and 35% of late-life depression are attributable to modifiable risk factors," the study found. It turns out that people who've had a stroke before tend to develop depression or dementia, and the same is true in the reverse, Dr. Sanjula Singh, the lead author of the study, told The New York Times. Singh is also a principal investigator at the Brain Care Labs at Massachusetts General Hospital. Here are the top three practices that experts found have the greatest effect on your chances of staving off these brain conditions. If you don't know where to start, you can take a quiz to get your Brain Care Score, which is a system created at Mass General to measure how healthy your brain is. To receive your score, you answer questions about your lifestyle choices like your blood pressure levels, dietary habits and sleep quality. Having a higher Brain Care Score is associated with having a lower risk of dementia, depression and stroke, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry. And even lower scores can get a boost by working on the areas of improvement that are suggested in your results, according to Dr. Jonathan Rosand, a professor of neurology at Harvard University who treats patients with head trauma, spinal cord injuries and strokes at Mass General. "The key is to take the score as a guide and just use it for yourself to improve it, however you want to start improving it," Rosand told CNBC Make It in December of 2024. It's important to consult with a physician if you notice any early signs or symptoms of depression, stroke or dementia. "It's really helpful when you go to the doctor if you bring the score with you and you've already decided, 'This is what I'd like to work on.'" And make sure to consult your own medical professional regarding your specific health needs.
