Week 9: Another Quick Update AKA For Want of Stuff to Talk About

Howdy! Now, you may be wondering why I just used the word 'howdy' to open up a blog post. Well, that's because, after using 'salutations' last time, Mr. Atteberry suggested the word to me in an effort to keep with the whole "different greeting each time" thing. If you're still reading, congratulations, you've survived the worst of it.

just kidding I'LL NEVER RUN OUT OF IDEAS they'll just be really bad ideas

Anyway, this week was quite uneventful as I did more or less what I've been doing over the past few weeks, but in bulk so as to have more data for presentation. Speaking of presentation, I'm almost done with a first draft of the powerpoint I'm going to present. It asks the question of whether the CORE or clinical method of lesion data measurement is more effective and answers that question as the slides progress. The real challenge here is to incorporate all the little side projects I've been doing into my main question without having them feel forced in. Speaking of side projects... (flawless transition)

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Liver Data

The sideproject in which I'm looking through diseased liver cases from the pathology department -  to find the ones with the most quantifiable information, so that the CORE Lab can use them for analysis and cross-referencing - has yielded some results!

Through a sample size measurement, I have determined the likelihood of a case (in the total pool of 1800 cases or so) having certain statistic and/or conclusion tied to them. What I've found is as follows:

-Simply identifying the presence of steatosis/cirrhosis/other happened 1 in every 1 case, that is to say, all of them.

-Identifying macrovesicular/microvesicular damage happened 2 in every 3 cases, leaving the usable amount of cases at approximately 1200.

-Using the NAS Score (a score out of 8 measuring the fattiness of liver, the variables of which are variable themselves, but are generally pinpointed down to inflammation, degradation, and steatosis) happened 1 in every 10 cases, leaving the usable amount of reports at around 180.

-Using the hepatitic index score (a score out of 18 determining the severity of hepatitis in a patient, the variables of which are hard to pin down and thus will remain unnamed) happened 1 in every 15 cases, cutting the usable number of reports down to 120.

-Other possibly usable statistics were too janky to consider.

I defined a few of the confusing terms listed above in my last blog post, so check that out if you feel so inclined. :)

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Proton Beam Facility
Mayo Clinic is offering a tour of their newly constructed Proton Beam Facility to Mayo employees before the facility is opened to the public. A shuttle will take me there and back from the Scottsdale Mayo campus, and the best part is, time spent there will count as internship hours for the SRP (aw yeah)

It's funny, cuz you can see Excel open on his computer, and Excel has essentially
been my life these past weeks.

My assumption is that the facility will use proton beam technology to treat cancer in a more precise manner, targeting tumor cells more effectively while being able to spare healthy ones. It'll likely be quite an exciting tour, and I'll be sure to tell you about it in the next blog post!

Until then, signing off. Have a great day! (Wow my blog endings are becoming as cheesy as my openings)