Minnesota - September 2014 Archives

MINNEAPOLIS — Earlier this year, Mayo Clinic announced plans to build a state-of-the-art, 22,000 square foot Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center location in downtown Minneapolis as part of a long-term collaboration with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx. This weekend, the Twin Cities’ first sports medicine/musculoskeletal-dedicated GE 3T wide bore magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine was installed using a telescopic crane. Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center providers will begin treating Timberwolves and Lynx players at the Mayo Clinic Square location this October. The GE 3T wide bore MRI is just one example of the cutting edge technology Mayo Clinic will include in this facility to treat people of all ages and all walks of life. WHAT: GE 3T wide bore MRI install at Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center, Mayo Clinic Square WHEN: Sat., Sept. 6 (crane lift at approximately 7 a.m.) WHERE: Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center Mayo Clinic Square 700 Hennepin Avenue Minneapolis MEDIA CONTACT: Bryan Anderson, Mayo Clinic, 507-284-5005, anderson.bryan@mayo.edu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlXNSz6F-D0 Journalists: This animation is available in the downloads. ROCHESTER, Minn. — Although Mayo Clinic doctors and researchers don't have a definite answer as to why spina bifida birth defects occur, they have identified a few important risk factors and two different surgery options. Risk factors include race, family history, diabetes, obesity, increased body temperature and folate deficiency. A recent March of Dimes study on the risk of neural tube defect-affected pregnancies published in the American Journal of Public Health says, “Hispanic women are at an especially high risk of having newborns with serious birth defects.” According to this report, “more babies are born prematurely to Hispanics than women of other ethnicities in the United States making it the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country.” To help avoid birth defects, it’s mentioned that women of Mexican descent “fortifying corn masa flour with vitamin B folic acid could prevent more serious birth defects of the brain and spine,” according to the same publication. MEDIA CONTACT: Kelley Luckstein, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, 507-284-5005, newsbureau@mayo.edu

Meeting non-medical needs ahead of operations can aid recovery, cut health care costs, study suggests ROCHESTER, Minn. — How well patients recover from cancer surgery may be influenced by more than their medical conditions and the operations themselves. Family conflicts and other non-medical problems may raise their risk of surgical complications, a Mayo Clinic study has found. Addressing such quality-of-life issues before an operation may reduce patients’ stress, speed their recoveries and save health care dollars, the research suggests. The study specifically looked at colon cancer patients, and found that patients with a poor quality of life were nearly three times likelier to face serious postoperative complications. The findings are published in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery. “We know that quality of life is a very complex thing, but we can now measure it and work with it almost like blood pressure,” says lead author Juliane Bingener, M.D., a gastroenterologic surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. “We can say, ‘This is good, this is in the normal range, but this one here, that is not good, and maybe we should do something.’” Quality of life as measured in the study is about more than happiness and how well people feel physically, Dr. Bingener says. It also includes the financial, spiritual, emotional, mental and social aspects of their lives and whether their needs are being met.