At 49 years old, Trevor Mackay was the picture of health—participating in Pilates, jogging several times a week and training for a triathlon. So when the results of his annual PSA test revealed a slight increase over his previous test, he wasn’t the least bit concerned. But his doctor referred…
When Tiffany Chancheya was born in October 2005, she had a quarter-inch reddish mark on one cheek. Tiffany's parents, Tim and Samay Chancheya, grew worried several months later because the small splotch, later diagnosed as a hemangioma, had darkened and was mushrooming in size. Hemangiomas are birthmarks caused by the…
Timing. It often determines whether a stroke victim will resume a normal life, suffer disabilities – or even survive. “From the onset of symptoms until treatment begins, there are only four and half hours in which intravenous clot-busting drugs are effective,” says neurologist Dr. Steven Cramer of the UCI Health…
Carey Moyer was 31 and still a newlywed when she felt a lump in her right breast in January 2010. "It felt like a rock, but it didn’t hurt when I touched it," Moyer recalls. "So, of course I went online." She found little reassurance. When her gynecologist felt the…
When Debra Giesy began experiencing lower back pain, she thought it was sciatica, a condition caused by compression of the lumbar or sciatic nerves in the spine. She took ibuprofen and hoped the pain would go away. She never imagined it would lead her to UC Irvine Medical Center. Giesy…
To many people, the term heart failure conjures up an image of an out-of-the-blue emergency, a heart that has suddenly stopped beating. In reality, heart failure is a process in which the heart muscle becomes so weakened over time that it no longer pumps enough blood to meet the body's…
Dr. Kenneth J. Chang has built one of the nation's finest digestive disease centers for UCI Health with a drive and passion inspired by doctors he assisted in a poor Taiwanese fishing village nearly 30 years ago. Then a medical student, Chang had taken a year off from his studies…
When she was eight years old, Karen Sommers watched a movie about a young woman struggling with leukemia. It made her realized that she wanted to help people with cancer. Sommers has been doing exactly that for nearly 30 years, first as a registered nurse and today as a nurse…
The physicians at the UCI Health Melanoma Center specialize in the most advanced methods for determining the spread of this aggressive skin cancer beyond the initial site. One of the best predictors of the spread of melanoma is determining whether the disease involves lymph nodes, says Dr. James G. Jakowatz…
Wayne Treichel was 62 when his wife convinced him to get an endoscopy and colonoscopy. He didn’t have any symptoms or pain, and was in good health, but his wife knew preventive screening was important. As it turns out, having those exams saved Wayne’s life. His doctor diagnosed him with…
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