CT Scans and Lung Cancer Small or slow-growing nodules (小结节) discovered on a lung scan are unlikely to develop into tumors over the next two years, researchers reported on Wednesday. The findings reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, could help doctors decide when to do more aggressive testing for lung cancer. They could also help patients avoid unnecessarily aggressive and potentially harmful testing when lesions (损伤) found. Lung cancer, the biggest cancer killer in the United States and globally, is often not diagnosed until it has spread. It kills 159,000 people a year in the United States alone. The work is part of a larger effort to develop guidelines to help doctors decide what to do when such growths, often discovered by accident, appear in a scan. High-tech X-rays called CT scans can detect tumors-but they see all sorts of other blobs (模糊的一团) that are not tumors, and often the only way to tell the difference is to take a biopsy (活检), a dangerous procedure. At the moment, routine lung cancer screening is considered impractical because of its high cost and because too many healthy people are called back for further testing. Good guideline could help make lung cancer screening practical, Dr. Rob van Kiaveren of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who led the new study, said in a telephone interview. The team looked at 7, 557 people at high risk for lung cancer because they were current and former smokers. All received multidetector (多层螺旋) CT scans that measured the size of any suspicious-looking modules. Volunteers who had nodules over 9.7 mm in width, or had growth of 4.6 mm that grew fast enough to more than double in volume every 400 days, were sent for further testing. Of the 196 people who fell into that category, 70 were found to have lung cancer, 10 additional cases were found years later. But of the 7, 361 who tested negative during screening only 20 lung cancer cases later developed. In a second round of screening done one year after the first, 1.8 percent were sent to the doctor because they had a nodule that was large or fast-growing. More than half turned out to have lung cancer. The result means that if the screening test says you don’t have lung cancer, you probably don’t, the researcher said. "The chances of finding lung cancer one and two years after a negative first-round test were 1 in 1,000 and 3 in 1,000 respectively, "they concluded. According to the passage, good guidelines for lung cancer screening______.
A. are a little bit too costly
B. do not exist yet
C. are being implemented
D. have been developed
Do Patients Trust Doctors Too Much Earlier this year, the American College of Surgeons, the national scientific and educational organization of surgeons conducted a nationwide survey that found that the average patient devotes an hour or less to researching his or her surgery or surgeon. While prospective patients worry about the costs or complications of an operation, they don’t necessarily look for information that would address their concerns. In fact, more than a third of patients who had an operation in the last five years never reviewed the credentials of the surgeon who operated. Patients are more likely to spend time researching a job change (on average, about 10 hours) or a new car (8 hours) than the operation they are about to submit to or the surgeon who wields (支配) the knife. And many patients are satisfied with the answers they receive from their surgeons or primary care doctors, whoever those individuals happen to be. I felt curious about the survey, so I called Dr. Thomas Russell, executive director of the American College of Surgeons. "There is a tendency for patients not to get particularly involved and not to feel compelled to look into their surgery or surgeons." he told me. There are consequences to that kind of blind trust. "Today, medicine and surgery are really team sports." Dr. Russell continued, "and the patient, as the ultimate decision maker, is the most important member of the team. Mistakes can happen, and patients have to be educated and must understand what is going on. " In other words, a healthy doctor-patient relationship does not simply entail good bedside manners and responsible office management on the part of the doctor. It also requires that patients come to the relationship educated about their doctors, their illnesses and their treatment. "If we are truly going to reform the health care system in the US," Dr. Russell said, "everybody has to participate actively and must educate themselves. That means doctors, nurses, other health care professionals, lawyers pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies. But most of all, it means the patient." Trust is important. But as Sir Francis Bacon, who was among the first to understand the importance of gathering data in science, once observed, knowledge is power. It is wrong to think that a healthy doctor-patient relationship______.
A. is dependent just on the doctor
B. is a goal that can be achieved
C. entails any effort on the part of the patient
D. is what the patient truly desires
Questions 11~14 are based on the following conversation. Where has the woman been
A. To Florida.
B. To Colorado.
C. To Arizona.
D. To California.
Irish Dolphins may Have a Unique Dialect Irish scientists monitoring dolphins living in a river estuary in the southwest of the country believe they may have developed a unique dialect to communicate with each other. The Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation (SDWF) has been studying a group of up to 120 bottle-nose dolphins in the River Shannon using vocalizations collected on a computer in a cow shed near the River Shannon. As part of a research project, student Ronan Hickey digitized and analyzed a total of 1,882 whistles from the Irish dolphins and those from the Welsh dolphins on a computer and separated them into six fundamental whistle types and 32 different categories. Of the categories, he found most were used by both sets of dolphins but eight were only heard from the Irish dolphins. "We are building up a catalogue of the different whistle types they use and trying to associate them with behavior like foraging, resting, socializing and the communications of groups with calves," project leader Simon Berrow said. "Essentially we are building up what is like a dictionary of words they use or sounds they make." Berrow, a marine biologist, said the dolphins’ clicks are used to find their way around and locate prey. The whistles are communications. "They do a whole range of other sounds like barks, groans and a kind of gunshot," he said. "The gunshot is an intense pulse of sound. Sperm whales use it to stun their prey." "When I first heard it I was surprised as I thought sperm whales were the only species who used it. We can speculate the dolphins are using it for the same reason as the sperm whales," Berrow said. References in local legend indicate there have been dolphins in the Shannon estuary for generations and they may even have been resident there as far back as the 6th century. They are regularly seen by passengers on the Shannon ferry and an estimated 25,000 tourists every year take special sightseeing tours on local boats to visit them. Of the 32 categories, eight were produced only by the Irish dolphins.
A. Right
B. Wrong
C. Not mentioned