Every year thousands of people undergo hip replacement surgery to get rid of pain caused by arthritis. The good news is that most hip replacement operations are successful, and people who have them are pain free. But sometimes, after years of wear, those replacement joints can loosen. New technology is making that happen much less often. But for people who do experience pain because of a worn out replacement, doctors at Mayo Clinic have ways to fix the problem.

Every year about 250-thousand women in the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer. Most of these women were not known to be at high risk. That’s why researchers at Mayo Clinic are looking for better ways to identify who’s at increased risk in order to enhance early detection and, perhaps some day, help these women prevent the disease. They’re finding clues in breast tissue.

Marathons, 10-K’s, bike rides and telethons. Events to raise money for diseases like cancer seem to happen all the time. Many of these fund raisers really do make a difference in the race to find a cure. More on how one marathon is raising money to help researchers learn about cancer genes so they can work towards developing better treatments.

Dr. S. Vincent Rajkumar, Mayo Clinic hematologist, discusses the first systematic study to determine association of Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance (MGUS) with all diseases in 17,398 patients, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Here is a link to the article: http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/…

Click on the following link to hear Dr. Rajkumar talk about this study.

Dr. Rajkumar MGUS Study

Dr. Barbara Yawn, Director of Research at Olmsted Medical Center, provides an overview of her study on Health Care Utilization and the Cost Burden of Herpes Zoster, published in the September 2009 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The full text of the article is available at http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/content/84/9/787.full

Click on the link below to listen to Dr. Yawn talk about her research.

Mayo Clinic Proceedings Shingles Study

Memory loss, personality changes, a shrinking ability to do daily tasks. It’s not easy to watch a loved one suffer from dementia. It’s also not easy at times for doctors to know exactly what kind of dementia a person may have. That’s because there’s not been a test that can differentiate between, say, Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy Body Dementia. Now, researchers at Mayo Clinic have developed a way to look at the living brain and more accurately tell what type of dementia a person has. And this may help get patients on the right treatment.

Stomach pain, nausea, heartburn, trouble swallowing : Common symptoms that prompt many people to head to the doctor’s office. But it’s not always easy for doctors to find out what’s causing them. That’s especially true if the culprit is a certain type of food allergy which can contribute to particular medical conditions. There just hasn’t been a reliable and accurate way to test them until now.

Hypothermia can be deadly. Getting too cold from being in icy water or frigid temperatures can cause your body temperature to drop dangerously low. Mayo Clinic Dr. David Freeman, talks about how using hypothermia can help save the lives of stroke patients.

Hypothermia for Stroke-Extended Interview

A living nightmare. That’s how the woman you’re about to meet describes her experience with a rare disease called myasthenia gravis. The condition caused her to become so weak she couldn’t walk, talk or swallow. After seeing several doctors, she ended up at Mayo Clinic where medication and a minimally invasive approach to surgery helped her regain her strength and her life.

This is a story about beating the odds. The woman you’re about to meet was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and told she had months to live. But before she had major surgery and chemotherapy to try to keep the devastating disease at bay, she got a second opinion. A new diagnosis with the promise of life.