Department of Medicine In the News

The concept of using stents to seal off non-flow-limiting vulnerable plaques, before they have a chance to rupture, worked out in the first major trial testing this provocative idea.

As the flu season ends, Colorado doctors are keeping an eye on the rise of measles cases nationwide.

The University of Colorado is preparing to begin testing gene therapies for ...

During the first three years Colorado’s “red flag” law was in effect, judges approved more than two-thirds of the petitions seeking the removal of guns from people believed to be dangerous, according to a study released Monday.

Denver’s weather has been nice lately, and naturally, Coloradans are getting outside. But sunshine and temperatures in the 60s mean allergy season has arrived.

Sarah Wartell first started noticing the signs in 2020. “I went to the ER a couple times, you know, being told it was food poisoning or, you know, a stomach bug,” said Wartell.

A Denver Health oncologist spoke with FOX31 about the importance of cancer screening and treatment after Princess Kate announced she has cancer.

If you’re diagnosed with high cholesterol, exercise and eating a healthy diet are generally the first line of attack.

Like many parts of the body, the lymph nodes are invisible laborers: We tend not to appreciate the work they do until they start acting up. Located throughout the body, these small, bean-shaped glands belong to the lymphatic system, a network of fluid-filled channels that are part of the immune system, according to the National Library of Medicine. 

Kris Koehler could tell something was wrong in the summer of 2013, when he started suffering unexplained abdominal pain and his bowels behaved differently.

The United States is knee-deep in what some experts call the opioid epidemic’s “fourth wave,” which is not only placing drug users at greater risk but is also complicating efforts to address the nation’s drug problem.

Of the many young people whom Cathy Eng has treated for cancer, the person who stood out the most was a young woman with a 65-year-old’s disease. 

In this first of four exclusive episodes, MedPage Today brought together three expert leaders in the field -- moderator Michael Wechsler of National Jewish Health in Denver [and professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine], is joined by Flavia Hoyte, also of National Jewish Health [and associate professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine], and Leonard Bacharie of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee -- for a virtual roundtable discussion on the encouraging new data from these dupilumab studies.

Joshua Barocas, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, urged parents to vaccinate their children if they had not yet done so. “If you are a parent who’s been on the fence, now is the time, given the outbreak potential and the outbreaks that we see, and I would also encourage healthcare workers to welcome people with open, non-judgmental arms,” he said.

For patients with eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) receiving standard care, benralizumab is noninferior to mepolizumab, according to a study published in the March 7 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Michael Fiore, the outreach coordinator for Voices for Awareness and Project Facing Fentanyl, remembered selling drugs to support his addiction and skating through the system before getting clean — after serving a prison term in New York.

Age has been called into question ahead of the 2024 presidential election. We took those questions to a geriatrics expert at the University of Colorado to see how — or if — a candidate's age can impact their ability.

 Surprising new data shows that of all the cancer deaths in people under age 55, colorectal cancer is now a top killer.

The Office of Saving People Money on Health Care’s Annual Report for Long COVID was just released – and as it turns out, it’s affecting more Coloradans than expected.

An estimated 700,000 to 1,000,000 falls occur in hospitalized patients in this country every year, with one-quarter to one-third of the falls leading to injuries.

Mass shootings. Bioterror attacks. Natural disasters. Wars. There’s seemingly no shortage of potential mass-casualty incidents (MCIs) that can lead health care professionals, including hospitalists, into response roles. 

When Dr. David Kao tells patients they have atrial fibrillation – an irregular and often rapid heart rhythm that can lead to stroke, blood clots or other health issues – their first question is usually "Do I have to give up coffee?"

A 4 + 4 block schedule (four inpatient weeks plus four outpatient weeks) is associated with improved resident burnout scores, according to a study published online Feb. 28 in JAMA Network Open.

 Gregory G. Schwartz, MD, PhD, chief of the cardiology section at Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center and professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colorado, is leading the VA-IMPACT trial. Despite metformin's long history and widespread use, he said his study is the first placebo-controlled cardiovascular outcomes trial of the drug.

Iwas 28 years old when I came out to my mom. When I told her I was a lesbian, she cried. Hard. As her tears kept falling, I said: "Can you please tell me why you're crying?"

You have, right now inside you, a gene known as UGT1A1. But that’s so formal. Let’s just call it Eugene.

The publication of full trial results from the MANDARA trial further underlines the potential of benralizumab (Fasenra) in the ability to help adult patients achieve remission of relapsing or refractory eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis.

A dearth of coordination or integration between rehab teams and palliative care teams routinely forces some patients into a cycle between the hospital and the nursing home in their last year of life.

An important new study indicates that for some sufferers of chronic back pain, retraining the brain’s perception of pain may yield greater relief than treating the back only as the site of the pain.

Cumulative safety data from three trials testing the reversible direct factor XIa inhibitor asundexian in patients at risk for stroke or recurrent cardiovascular events suggest a better bleeding profile compared with apixaban (Eliquis; Bristol Myers Squibb) in a variety of patient types.

Chances are you or someone you know has gotten sick over the past few weeks or months. 

Colorado University Cancer Center member Sunnie Kim, MD, emphasizes knowing the risk factors and recognizing the symptoms.

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

When the topic of what causes stomach cancer comes up, what is often discussed are the risk factors that predispose someone to get the fifth most common type of cancer in the world — like age (being over 60), sex (male), and a family history of the disease.

Patients who haven’t been able to start taking the weight loss drug Wegovy due to shortages may find it’s easier to access the medicine this year.

Patients with type 2 diabetes and their clinicians may not share the same priorities when it comes to choosing a second-line drug after metformin, new research suggested.

CU Anschutz oncologist Dr. Wells Messersmith said Colorado will see more than 29,000 cancer cases this year.

How This Is Building Me, hosted by world-renowned oncologist D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, is a podcast focused on the highs and lows, ups and downs of all those involved with cancer, cancer medicine, and cancer science across the full spectrum of life’s experiences.

Rashid Sayles, 53, unfurled his legs in the Denver Health hospital bed and stretched them—left and right, left and right.

If you’re a woman with a thyroid condition, could getting vaccinated against COVID-19 make it worse? 

In the time before COVID-19, Danielle Mortell was biking, hiking, and snowboarding her way through life.

Typically, a patient with liver failure from alcohol use is an older man with a long history of heavy drinking, but in recent years, more women and people under 40 are showing up in need of transplants, said James Burton, [professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine] who takes care of patients before and after liver transplants at UCHealth in Aurora, but doesn’t perform the surgeries.

Folks with life-threatening chronic illnesses can receive effective support over the telephone as they manage their condition day by day, a new clinical trial finds.

With the cold weather, allergies are not something you think of this time of year, but health experts say that allergies and other issues can affect your lungs when it’s cold and dry out.

Colds and illnesses are back in northern Colorado this year, and there’s a new player in the winter season mix, according to a UCHealth doctor: COVID.

In survey results published in 2021, 82 percent of physicians admitted they believed people with significant disabilities have a worse quality of life than those without impairments. Only 57 percent said they welcomed disabled patients. “It’s shocking that so many physicians say they don’t want to care for these patients,” said Eric Campbell, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado.

Fresh off the holidays, and now in the heart of winter, respiratory viruses are making their seasonal rounds through Colorado. And much like a lingering guest, the crud is sticking around longer than anyone wants.

Academic hospital medicine was a different job back in the day.

The holidays are behind us, but the aftermath just won't leave us be.

Some people 11 News spoke with say nearly their entire family was sick over the holiday season. Others say they went to the doctor right when they started feeling symptoms to try and stop the illness as soon as possible.

Curative potential at a longer follow-up, logistics and patient risk and eligibility are all important considerations when sequencing bispecific antibodies and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy for advanced large B-cell lymphoma.

It’s the season when many people set New Year’s resolutions for the year ahead, and these goals are often related to physical health.

A post hoc secondary analysis of the landmark STRONG-HF trial further underlines the safety and efficacy of rapid, uptitration of guideline-directed medical therapy among patients hospitalized for acute heart failure.

The majority of randomized clinical trials of AI use conducted worldwide "clearly show an increase in the adenoma detection rate (ADR) during colonoscopy," Prateek Sharma, MD, a gastroenterologist at The University of Kansas Cancer Center, Kansas City, told Medscape Medical News. "But the real-world results have been quite varied; some show improvement, and others don't."

It’s a common complaint this winter: After coming down with a respiratory illness, some people feel like they can’t shake a lingering cough or runny nose despite other symptoms going away. Or they start to recover then see symptoms return a week or two later.

A triple threat of COVID-19, influenza, and RSV could ruin the holiday celebration for many Coloradans planning to be with family in the next couple of days.

What if the best way to treat your chronic back pain is by retraining your brain?

In September, Children's Hospital Colorado asked healthy adults to consider donating part of their liver. An estimated 100 people responded, meaning the 10 children on the transplant waitlist will likely receive the life-saving gift.

Many people have been putting off their latest flu shot and COVID-19 booster. Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sounding the alarm, warning vaccination levels are low.

Dr. Tejas Patil, Assistant Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, says biomarker testing opens the door to understanding your cancer and providing therapies that don’t require chemotherapy. 

Cases of the respiratory disease tuberculosis are increasing in Colorado. 

Long COVID, an often debilitating condition, has left doctors scrambling to find treatments and diagnostic tools. The problem is even more complicated for residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities, many of whom are already experiencing a health decline.

Colorado is experiencing an increase in cases of the world's deadliest infectious disease – tuberculosis, or TB. According to UCHealth, the state has seen a nearly 60% increase in cases compared to last year. 

In September, , it was predicted the flu season may peak around Thanksgiving, instead of the usual Christmastime. UCHealth now predicts the flu to peak in a few more weeks.

Three multidisciplinary clinics in the state see long COVID patients, at National Jewish Health in Denver, UCHealth in Aurora and Family Health West in Fruita. Together, they’ve treated about 10,000 people since mid-2020 — a significant number, but nowhere near everyone in need.

Is granting patients immediate access to their medical images a worthwhile practice? Experts debated both sides during a panel discussion Monday as RSNA 2023.

Denver’s current threshold to open emergency warming shelters or stop encampment sweeps that boot people from the warmth of their tents onto the sidewalk is 20 degrees. That’s far below the 32-degree temperature that can trigger hypothermia or frostbite that can lead to lost limbs and even lost lives.

For decades, the conventional wisdom on cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes mucus to build up in the body’s passageways, held that it mostly affected white people. New research out of Colorado aims to address the racial disparities in diagnosing the disease and saving the lives of everyone who lives with it.

Devon Brown knew not to ignore it when she found a lump in her breast that just didn’t seem quite right. “It felt very round and hard, so that was pretty abnormal,” she said.

In Mead, a junior varsity football game at 4 p.m. on a Monday fills the stands. Parents, grandparents and siblings stomp on the bleachers, making their presence known. It's an early November afternoon and the first cold game of the season. The team is losing, but everyone starts to smile as they watch #31, Beckett Reiff, take the field.

“It’s something that really changes a lot of things in their life,” says Daniel Bessesen, chief of endocrinology at Denver Health [and professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine], who treats patients with obesity. “They go from food being a central focus to it’s just not.”

Communication is key between a doctor or nurse and a patient when their health is on the line. Friday, medical students at the University of Colorado's Anschutz campus learned how to better communicate with all of their patients.

On Friday, the Center for Advancing Professional Excellence (CAPE) on the CU Anschutz campus held an immersive diversity training for 200 healthcare students.

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded $54 million to the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI) at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus. The seven-year grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences will help power biomedical research and training, not just at CU Anschutz, but across the state.

Health care experts recommend getting flu and COVID-19 vaccinations before traveling and gatherings for the holiday season.

More than 50 million Americans suffer from chronic back pain — but a new drug-free groundbreaking treatment, pain reprocessing therapy, is helping patients and offering new hope. NBC’s Jacob Soboroff reports for TODAY.

“We knew we had issues collecting this data, but we first needed to define the process of how to evaluate the quality of this data,” said Cory K. Hussain, associate chief medical information officer for health equity and clinical effectiveness at Denver Health [and assistant professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine].

In a related editorial, Jennifer L. Michener, an assistant professor of medicine and internal medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and Mindy Sobota, an associate professor of medicine at Brown University, explained that as internal medicine physicians, “we should inquire about patients’ reproductive health needs and serve as a trusted resource for our patients seeking abortion.”

The 50% reductions in target lesion revascularization and target vessel myocardial infarction are “incredible” and suggest that patients may soon get “definitive therapy upfront ... reducing cost and improving care,” commented John Messenger, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora.

“Fructose is what triggers our metabolism to go into low power mode,” explained Richard Johnson, a researcher at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo., explained in a news release.

“There is a significant, a meaningful difference between someone seeking to end their life because they have a mental illness, and someone seeking to end their life who is going to die in the very near future anyway,” said Dr. Matthew Wynia, director of the University of Colorado’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities.

“Essentially, these theories, which put a litany of metabolic and dietary drivers at the center of the obesity epidemic, are all pieces of a puzzle unified by one last piece: fructose,” said author Richard Johnson, a researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, in a news release.

Stacy Fischer, co-leader of cancer prevention and control at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, said several small studies have found that psychedelic drugs may help patients who are experiencing demoralization or despair because of their impending mortality. The study CU is part of will have a larger and more diverse group of people, which hopefully will produce more conclusive evidence of whether there’s a benefit, she said. “There’s so much science that needs to be done in this space,” Fischer said.

Farr, along with Lauren Truby, (UT Southwestern Medical Center), and Prateeti Khazanie, (University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora), outlined some of the changes coming to the heart allocation system, and how DCD transplants are expected to influence them, in a commentary in JACC: Heart Failure. Farr and Khazanie also discussed some of these issues during a session at the recent Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA) 2023 meeting.

“The results seen with tirzepatide are the best seen so far with any anti-obesity medication and are similar to results seen at one year with bariatric surgery,” says Adam Gilden, an associate professor and the associate director of the weight management and wellness clinic at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

Shanta Zimmer, senior associate dean for Education at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, discussed strategies for retention.

“I think we have been lucky,” said Michelle Barron, senior director of infection prevention at UCHealth [and professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine]. “I’ve been monitoring for it since the pandemic started.” Barron added: “This is what keeps me up at night.”

This National Coming Out Day, we are showcasing LGBTQ women featured in "Eye to Eye: Portraits of Pride, Strength, Beauty," a photography series from Carey Candrian, an internal medicine associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

“What’s unique about the Rural Cancer Advisory Board is that it is entirely made up of and focused on the voices of community members,” Hillary Lum, associate professor of medicine-geriatrics at University of Colorado School of Medicine and faculty leader of the board, told Healio.

At the root of RA is an overactive immune system that is causing an excess of inflammation in your body—primarily, your joints. That inflammation can show up in your lungs, too. “Rheumatoid arthritis can really affect any part of the lung,” says Joyce Lee, a pulmonary disease specialist at UCHealth’s Interstitial Lung Disease Clinic and associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, CO. “It can involve the airways, the lung tissue, the blood vessels, and the pleural surfaces [the membrane lining the lungs].”

In 2018, when an outspoken pro-life advocate was scheduled to speak at an event run by a Christian-based club at University of Colorado School of Medicine’s Anschutz campus (CU Anschutz), in Aurora, a group of pro-choice students argued that the speaker should not be allowed. “As a woman leader in medicine, how can you allow this to happen?” one student demanded of Shanta Zimmer, senior associate dean of medical education.
 
Pushing back on their refusal to discuss different points of view about medical matters, she told them, “That might be an option in your political life outside of school, but as a burgeoning physician, that’s not acceptable.”

Hispanic Americans “take longer to be placed on the waiting list,” said Sixto Giusti, a kidney nephrologist at UCHealth [and associate professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine. “Until recently, once on the waiting list, they take even longer to get transplanted. They don’t feel like they’re going to be taken care of properly. They feel that they’re going to be taken advantage of. And culturally, it’s a big taboo to ask somebody for help, to ask somebody for a kidney.”

When New moved to Denver in January 2022 to work for Channel 7, one of his first stops was the thyroid cancer multidisciplinary clinic at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, where he was seen in one day by a team that included Bryan Haugen, professor of medicine in endocrinology, metabolism and diabetes in the CU School of Medicine, and Robert McIntyre, professor of surgery in GI, trauma and endocrine surgery, as well as other endocrine and surgery thyroid cancer specialists, advanced practice providers, pathologists, radiologists, and medical oncologists.

About a week ago, I spoke with Dan Pastula, chief of neuroinfectious diseases and global neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Colorado School of Public Health, for this very assignment about why upper respiratory infection symptoms like a cough, sore throat, and runny nose, tend to ramp up while you’re trying to sleep. Pastula walked me through all the factors that join forces to make colds feel so much worse at night.

“For decades studies have tried to link back pain to back problems like bulging discs or bad posture,” Yoni Ashar, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and first author of this study, told Medical News Today. “It turns out these sorts of things only cause relatively few cases of chronic back pain. Most cases of chronic back pain are caused primarily by brain changes, like the brain amplifying signals it receives from the back.”

About half of physicians reported experiencing burnout last year, and they are not alone. Between 50% and 60% of medical students and resident physicians live with high degrees of burnout, according to Lotte Dyrbye, chief well-being officer at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Researchers from the University of Colorado (UC) School of Medicine believe their findings, demonstrated in mice and in fat tissue from obese patients that underwent bariatric surgery, may be just the key. “There’s a third type of fat called beige,” said Timothy McKinsey, of the UC School of Medicine. “It’s when you take white fat, which normally isn’t all that good, and turn it into something that looks more like brown fat. By inhibiting HDAC11, we are stimulating the beiging of white fat. HDAC11 inhibition is changing the phenotype of fat tissue in a favorable way.”

This second Colorado, said Jane Reusch, professor of endocrinology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, “doesn’t really look dissimilar to what’s found in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.”

As experts raise awareness of the evidence supporting shorter antibiotic therapy for some conditions and the benefits of oral vs. IV-only therapy for others, we wanted to know: What is another ID dogma that should be reevaluated? We asked Joshua Barocas, associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s Public Health Committee.