jjablkowski's blog


The development and commercialization arm of the Cleveland Clinic held its 16th annual Medical Innovations Summit in October 2018. The clinic’s scientists and physicians sifted through 100 nominations to select 10 up-and-coming innovations that they predict will improve care for patients throughout the world.[1

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September 2018 marked the 20th anniversary of the World Health Organization’s report recognizing familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) as an important global public health issue.[1] FH results in life-long elevations in low density lipoprotein cholesterol and increased risk for cardiovascular disease, and affects one in 250 individuals.[2] It is among the most common inherited diseases to be encountered by clinicians; however, 20 years after the WHO’s report, FH remains underdiagnosed and undertreated in most of the world,[3] including British Columbia.[4]

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In 1828 it took 8 months for the young doctor William Fraser Tolmie (1812–1886) to sail from Scotland to the Pacific Northwest to assume his combined medical and fur-trading position with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Now NASA is planning to send a group of astronauts to Mars—a trip that may also take about 8 months. The big difference will be that instead of being tossed around on the ocean, the astronauts will be flying at supersonic speeds through space in weightlessness.

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Recently Cam Levins from Black Creek, BC, crossed the finish line of the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2 hours, 9 minutes, and 25 seconds. He broke the previous record held by Canadian Jerome Drayton, set 43 years ago in Japan in 1975 at 2:10:09.

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