OU Medical Center-Health Matters

If you needed surgery for cancer, would you choose a minimally invasive approach or the more traditional open surgery? More importantly, which would be the safest and most effective choice? Now, research supported by the Gynecologic Oncology Group, involving 2,600 patients at the OU Medical Center and some other sites nationwide provides some clearer answers for women with uterine cancer.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in this country. The disease will claim 30,000 lives this year alone. Now, specialists at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center are studying a new approach to treat prostate cancer. It utilizes a vaccine to treat patients whose cancer has spread.

One in three children in this country is overweight or obese. Lack of activity is a big part of the problem and the fact that 60 percent of kids play video games every single day is a contributing factor. Now, a physician and researcher at the OU Medical Center is trying to find out if the right video game might actually help overweight teens lose weight.

It sounds like science fiction - a doctor maps the heart and fixies what's wrong without even touching the patient. But it's real and it happened for the first time in the country in Oklahoma at the OU Medical Center.

The days of cheerleaders as sideline accessories are over. Today, they are finely-tuned athletes...just like the ones they are cheering for. But these athletic advances have come with a price. Sports medicine specialists with OU Physicians point to a new study that reveals as cheerleading abilities grow, so too do the number of injuries.

How healthy are your children or grandchildren? Are you doing all you can to help guide them down the path toward lifelong wellness? Experts at the University of Oklahoma College of Public Health stress lifelong wellness begins at home.

Antibiotic resistance strains of bacteria pose a mounting problem for patients and physicians. The problem is that certain bacteria have somehow learned how to outsmart drugs that used to effectively wipe them out. Now, researchers at the University of Oklahoma hope their work will help us get one step ahead of these evolving bacteria.

When most people think of sports-related injuries, sprains and strains, a broken arm or legs tend to come to mind. But there are also tens of thousands of eye injuries caused each year as the result of sports and recreation-related activities. Eye experts at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and Dean McGee Eye Institute urge parents to take precautions to protect their young athletes' eyes.

Kids are back in school and so is an increasingly common health problem, asthma. Asthma has reached epidemic proportions in preschool children and it has increased 75 percent in school aged children. But experts at Children's Hospital of Oklahoma say the key to winning the war on asthma is recognizing the symptoms early.

A silent epidemic is impacting children in schools all across the country. Experts with the OU College of Dentistry say it is one that affects not only their health, but their ability to learn and it's more common than most parents realize.

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. More than 32,000 people in this country learn they have pancreatic cancer every year. This year, a Duncan, OK man was one of them. With the help of OU Physicians' team of cancer specialists he is fighting and winning his battle against cancer. Now, he hopes to help others learn how to better protect themselves against this deadly cancer.

1. Put health at the top of the back-to-school list. 2. Is your child ready for kindergarten?

1. Researchers aim to stop bacteria at the genetic level 2. When cooking on the grill, temperature is everything.

There are few things more frightening than being told you have cancer. But learning you have a cancer that is considered incurable is one of them. Kathy Canon, a mother of three, was told she might have six months to live when her cancer was first diagnosed. But with the help of the experts at the cancer center at the OU MEDICAL CENTER and their arsenal of new medicines and treatments, Kathy is not only alive, she is thriving.

It's a gas that has no color, but researchers hope it will produce visibly positive results in some of the tiniest babies. Doctors in the neonatal unit at Children's Hospital at the OU MEDICAL CENTER are currently studying the effects of nitrous oxide on premature infants, who can't yet breath on their own.