TT HealthWatch

Dr. Richard Lange and Elizabeth Tracey•www.techtalkelpaso.com

tay up-to-date with the latest research in medicine and science with TT HealthWatch. This 10-minute podcast is hosted by Richard Lange, M.D., M.B.A., president of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso and dean of the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, and Elizabeth Tracey, M.S., Baltimore-based medical journalist.

Each week, Richard and Elizabeth explore recent peer-reviewed studies and breaking medical news, offering a Texas Tech perspective on the latest developments in health care.

Last refreshed: July 15th, 2025 at 5:18 PM ⓘ

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Episodes

Kids’ Health, Life Expectancy and Heart Risk Calculators

Program notes: 0:40 AHA risk calculator in various ethnicities 1:40 Works well in all of them 2:40 Women and ethnicities 3:00 Hepatitis C screening in EDs 4:01 Many ethnicities represented 5:01 Identified as having the virus 6:01 Once they tested only 24% were referred 7:01 It was free testing 7:40 Failing US children 8:41 78% more likely to die in the US 9:41 Some of these are preventable 10:24 Life expectancy after the pandemic 11:24 Remains almost a year deficit 12:24 Deaths from overdose dec...

Jul 11, 2025•13 min

Aphasia After Stroke, Chemotherapy Drugs, and New Hypertension Medicine

Program notes: 0:40 A novel way to help aphasia after a stroke 1:40 C7 nerve ligation 2:42 Somatosensory function versus speech processing 3:36 Substandard anticancer medications 4:40 Tested many using HPLC 5:40 Alarming that one in six is impacted 6:40 Paying out of pocket 7:38 New type of medicine for treatment resistant hypertension 8:38 Need to follow electrolytes 9:00 ED boarding for elderly 10:00 Length of stay increased 11:00 Elderly more likely to suffer complications 12:00 CMS program f...

Jul 04, 2025•13 min

Oral GLP-1 agonist, Satiety Pathways, and Stem Cell tx for T1D

Program notes: 0:40 Stem cells for type 1 diabetes 1:40 None had hypoglycemia afterwards 2:40 Autologous stem cells? 3:20 Oral GLP-1 agonist 4:20 Primary endpoint HbA1c reduction 5:20 Weight loss modest 6:20 Injectable GLP-1 plus an amylin analogue 7:20 Both those with diabetes and those without 8:20 No increased safety events 8:40 Mental health hospitalizations in adolescents 9:40 KID database 10:40 Females accounting for increase 11:40 67% of hospitalizations 12:57 End...

Jun 27, 2025•13 min

Screen Time, Cannabis Risks, and PET Scanning

Program notes: 0:35 Screen time trajectories in adolescents 1:33 31% had increasing addictive use trajectories 2:31 Females more involved in social media 3:06 Cannabis and CV risk 4:06 Smoking or using other products 5:06 Mechanisms include oxidative stress 6:06 Haven't regulated 6:28 Tau PET imaging in Alzheimer's 7:28 90% of tau positivity concurs with AB 8:30 Will blood test obviate? 9:30 Imaging to detect spread 9:43 CT perfusion for death by neurological criteria 10:43 Validation threshold ...

Jun 20, 2025•13 min

Family Affluence, Gut Bugs, Heat Illness, and Low Potassium Diets

This week's topics include family affluence and telomeres in children, gut bugs and respiratory illness in children, heat illness and homelessness, and low potassium diets and hypertension and diabetes. Program notes: 1:05 Heat illness and homelessness 2:05 No access to water 3:05 More likely in southern states 3:20 Telomere length, family affluence and cortisol 4:20 High affluence had longer telomeres 5:20 Cortisol may need to be measured over longer time interval 6:20 Dietary patterns, sodium ...

Jun 13, 2025•13 min

Breast And Colorectal Cancer, And CAR-T Therapy

This week's topics include treating hot flashes in breast cancer survivors, a blood test for detecting colorectal cancer, exercise to improve survival after colorectal cancer treatment and CAR-T therapy for solid tumors. Program notes: 0:40 CAR-Ts for solid tumors 1:40 Advanced gastric or gastroesophageal cancer 2:40 Cytokine release syndrome 3:22 Exercise after treatment for colorectal cancer 4:23 Disease free survival superior 5:23 Currently not much exercise 6:23 Potential mechanisms 7:10 Tre...

Jun 06, 2025•13 min

Skin Cancers, Second Stroke Risks, Weight Loss

This week's topics include the worldwide burden of skin cancers, risk of a second stroke when a person is taking anticoagulants, patients supporting each other for weight loss maintenance, and imaging for dense breasts. Program notes: 0:45 Dense breast tissue imaging 1:40 MRI and contrast enhanced mammography superior 2:40 Giving IV contrast with mammography 2:53 Burden of skin cancer in older adults worldwide 3:52 Greater disease burden in men 4:53 More likely to have exam and biopsy 5:48 Atria...

May 30, 2025•13 min

Mental Health, Fatty Liver, and Resistant Hypertension

This week's topics include treating resistant hypertension, gabapentanoids and the risk of self harm, risk for depression after diagnosis of a medical condition, and fatty liver and pregnancy. Program notes: 0:35 Depression after medical condition diagnosis 1:36 Any of a number of medical conditions 2:37 A much lower risk in comparison group 3:37 Major depressive disorder could be number one cause of YLL 4:01 Fatty liver and pregnancy outcomes 5:01 Matched to those with obesity or T2D 6:01 Scree...

May 23, 2025•13 min

Syphilis, Medications, and PTSD

This week's topics include USPSTF on screening for syphilis in pregnancy, when to take blood pressure medicines, comparing weight loss drugs, and a narrative intervention for PTSD after an ICU stay. Program notes: 0:40 NEJM publication of comparison of obesity medications 1:40 Tirzepatide versus semaglutide for 72 weeks 2:41 Also had reduction in blood pressure 3:26 Rise in congenital syphilis and screening 4:26 Disparities among various groups 5:26 Highest incidence in the last 30 years 6:26 In...

May 16, 2025•13 min

Multi-Component Vaccine, Urinary Incontinence, Diabetic Kidney Disease and Discharge Summaries

Program notes: 0:40 Covid and flu vaccine 1:40 More immunogenic response 2:40 Female urinary incontinence treatment 3:40 Mid urethral sling or botox 4:40 Doesn't require surgery 5:40 Combined therapy group 6:10 Large language models and discharge summaries 7:10 100 hospital encounters 8:10 Maybe provides a draft 9:00 AI and diagnosing diabetic kidney disease 10:01 Large number of retinal images to train 11:01 Can actually see blood vessels 12:29 End...

May 09, 2025•12 min

Cancer patients, lung cancer, Pepfar cessation, and gun injuries

Program notes: 0:47 Gun injuries and deer hunting season 1:47 Other associated injuries 2:47 Coincidence of hunting? 3:48 Restrict hunting guns to that use 4:10 Can we avoid surgery in some with cancer? 5:10 Dostarlimab treatment 6:10 Can help avoid surgery in few who have this mutation 7:10 Look at specific pathways 7:30 Lung cancer treatment 8:32 71% responded 9:12 Impact of Pepfar funding freeze 10:12 Looked at waiver scenarios 11:12 Decreased deaths and infection 12:13 Takes time to resume 1...

May 02, 2025•13 min

Stroke, clot formation, breastfeeding, and prostate cancer

Program notes: 0:40 Polygenic risk score for prostate cancer 1:40 90th percentile or higher 2:40 Genetic risk for cancer 3:41 Avoid false positives 4:00 Cervical artery dissection and subsequent stroke risk 5:00 High in older people, Black and Hispanic people 6:00 Nonspecific symptoms may predict 7:00 Preventing clotting in patients with cancer 8:00 Standard dose followed by half dose 8:44 USPSTF on supporting breastfeeding 9:45 Support systems not that good 10:55 What is the best strategy to su...

Apr 25, 2025•12 min

Strep, hearing loss, MS, and TAVR outcomes

Program notes: 0:33 TAVR outcomes improved 1:33 Dapagliflozin 2:33 Looked at comorbidities 3:00 Tolebrutinib for relapsing MS 4:00 Annualized relapse rate 5:00 Works in the CNS 6:00 First endpoint wasn't proven 6:20 Invasive group A strep 7:20 Become more resistant to antibiotics 8:01 Not a single type of group A strep 8:25 Hearing loss and heart failure 9:25 Psychological distress mediiates 10:25 With hearing aids, you would think it would go down 11:20 Everything looks associated 12:03 End...

Apr 18, 2025•12 min

Diet, dementia, cardiovascular disease and risk factors

This week's topics include aging and diet, blood based biomarkers for dementia, ten and thirty year risk for cardiovascular disease, and global effect of cardiovascular risk factors. Program notes: 1:00 Five factors and cardiovascular disease 2:00 Additional life years free of CVD 3:00 Irrespective of where you live 3:27 Optimal dietary patterns for healthy aging 4:28 Higher intake of fruits, vegetables 5:28 Little bit better one or another 6:28 Can actually change this 6:40 Ten and thirty year ...

Apr 11, 2025•12 hr 27 min

A-fib, bleeding, penicillin, hypertension

This week's topics include a better way to treat A-fib, managing bleeding in cardiac surgery, penicillin for strep infections, and treating pulmonary hypertension. Program notes: 0:55 Ablation for afib 1:51 Pulsed field ablation PFA 2:55 Training physicians 3:23 Prothrombin complex versus frozen plasma 4:24 Noninferiority outcome 5:24 Documented bleeding issue 6:25 New treatment for pulmonary hypertension 7:25 Improve outcomes in advanced disease 8:25 Well tolerated 8:40 Penicillin lowest dose t...

Apr 04, 2025•12 hr 10 min

Biopsies, long term risk after TIA

This week's topics include cell signatures in PCOS, a new technique for prostate biopsies, improving the safety of carotid endarterectomy, and long term risk after TIA. 0:41 Long term risk of stroke after TIA 1:39 About one in five over the next ten years 2:40 Need to continue antiplatelet agents 3:33 New technique for prostate biopsy 4:36 Biopsy naive men 5:35 Microultrasonography used 6:35 Limited availability of MRI 7:33 Improving safety of carotid endarterectomy 8:33 Sonolysis used 9:34 Safe...

Mar 28, 2025•13 min

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