Dr. Joseph Dayan. Photo by Ethan Kavet.

There’s currently no cure for lymphedema, the uncomfortable swelling that can occur in limbs after the removal or radiation of lymph nodes. But there are symptom-alleviating treatments, many of which are described in an article in Cure.

The article quotes MSK’s Dr. Joseph Dayan, who has performed microsurgery to manage lymphedema for a decade, including lymph node transplant. Dr. Dayan pioneered a technique called reverse lymphatic mapping, through which physicians identify lymph nodes that can be safely removed and transplanted to the affected arm or leg. Patients take three to four weeks to recover from lymph node transplant, and most who undergo it experience improved limb drainage.

Learn more about lymphedema prevention, screening, and treatment at MSK.

Check out two recent articles from Science and the Los Angeles Times, featuring personal stories from MSK researchers.

Continue reading →

In a recent Nature Medicine article, MSK’s Dr. Thomas Fuchs and his colleagues describe how they trained artificial intelligence (AI) to process pathology slides at large scale. The research was completed with the start-up Paige.AI and is reported by The Cancer Letter, Tech Crunch, Becker’s Healthcare, and 360 DX.

Dr. Thomas Fuchs. Credit: Richard DeWitt

To train deep learning systems, researchers typically need to manually curate data, a time-consuming process that has previously prevented large-scale AI applications to pathology datasets. In this study, researchers instead trained the system using only the slide-level diagnostic information already in the electronic health record. The study included 44,732 slides of prostate, skin, or axillary lymph node tissue from 15,187 patients at 800 institutions. Their calculations indicate that the model could reduce a pathologist’s workload by up to 75%, classifying cancer without sacrificing sensitivity.

To learn more about artificial intelligence, including a list of the latest AI-related publications from MSK authors, check out the Library’s new LibGuide.