On today’s podcast episode, Leaps.org spoke with Shai Efrati, a physician and professor in the schools of medicine and neuroscience at Tel Aviv University, about the potential health benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
On today’s podcast episode, I had a chance to speak with Shai Efrati, a physician and professor in the schools of medicine and neuroscience at Tel Aviv University. Efrati also directs the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research, and our conversation in this episode focuses on the potential health benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Efrati's studies point to a connection between the use of hyperbaric chambers and improvements for a range of health problems such as Long Covid, strokes and traumatic brain injuries. Plus, Efrati has an early line of research suggesting that hyperbaric oxygen therapy could help protect against cognitive decline in healthy people and perhaps even slow down the overall aging process.
We talk about what’s going in on the body during hyperbaric oxygen therapy that could possibly lead to transformative benefits for patients, some of whom had searched for treatments previously and come up empty. We also discuss exactly where Efrati is with this line of inquiry, both what his studies have shown and the great deal of additional research that’s needed before the healthcare system can and should fully embrace hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Efrati and I talk about why you can’t just go on Amazon and buy something that says hyperbaric – the only way it can have a positive effect is if you access the real version of the chamber and use it correctly under the supervision of a knowledgeable physician.
I also ask Efrati what we know about the short- and long-term risks for those who follow the research-based protocol on a regular basis. And what about accessibility to people without a lot of extra cash to spend on their health? Efrati is already rolling out this therapy at a small number of specialized clinics in places like the Villages retirement community in Florida.
Shai Efrati
A recent study in The Lancet Oncology showed that AI found 20 percent more cancers on mammogram screens than radiologists alone.
Published in The Lancet Oncology, the study analyzed the scans of 80,000 Swedish women with a moderate hereditary risk of breast cancer who had undergone a mammogram between April 2021 and July 2022. Half of these scans were read by AI and then a radiologist to double-check the findings. The second group of scans was read by two researchers without the help of AI. (Currently, the standard of care across Europe is to have two radiologists analyze a scan before diagnosing a patient with breast cancer.)
The study showed that the AI group detected cancer in 6 out of every 1,000 scans, while the radiologists detected cancer in 5 per 1,000 scans. In other words, AI found 20 percent more cancers than the highly-trained radiologists.
Scientists have been using MRI images (like the ones pictured here) to train artificial intelligence to detect cancers earlier and with more accuracy. Here, MIT's AI system, MIRAI, looks for patterns in a patient's mammograms to detect breast cancer earlier than ever before. news.mit.edu
But even though the AI was better able to pinpoint cancer on an image, it doesn’t mean radiologists will soon be out of a job. Dr. Laura Heacock, a breast radiologist at NYU, said in an interview with CNN that radiologists do much more than simply screening mammograms, and that even well-trained technology can make errors. “These tools work best when paired with highly-trained radiologists who make the final call on your mammogram. Think of it as a tool like a stethoscope for a cardiologist.”
AI is still an emerging technology, but more and more doctors are using them to detect different cancers. For example, researchers at MIT have developed a program called MIRAI, which looks at patterns in patient mammograms across a series of scans and uses an algorithm to model a patient's risk of developing breast cancer over time. The program was "trained" with more than 200,000 breast imaging scans from Massachusetts General Hospital and has been tested on over 100,000 women in different hospitals across the world. According to MIT, MIRAI "has been shown to be more accurate in predicting the risk for developing breast cancer in the short term (over a 3-year period) compared to traditional tools." It has also been able to detect breast cancer up to five years before a patient receives a diagnosis.
The challenges for cancer-detecting AI tools now is not just accuracy. AI tools are also being challenged to perform consistently well across different ages, races, and breast density profiles, particularly given the increased risks that different women face. For example, Black women are 42 percent more likely than white women to die from breast cancer, despite having nearly the same rates of breast cancer as white women. Recently, an FDA-approved AI device for screening breast cancer has come under fire for wrongly detecting cancer in Black patients significantly more often than white patients.
As AI technology improves, radiologists will be able to accurately scan a more diverse set of patients at a larger volume than ever before, potentially saving more lives than ever.