health

A first-time study using a remote-controlled robot shows doctors can make accurate assessments about concussions from a distance. The research is meant to help rural schools gain access to medical specialists for sporting events. Arizona Public Radio’s Melissa Sevigny reports.

Some doctors are operating on hands in a new way: with the patient wide awake. It eliminates the risks and side effects of general anesthesia. But the technique has been slow to catch on in the United States because of a decades-old myth about the dangers of injecting adrenaline into hands. From the Arizona Science Desk, Melissa Sevigny reports on how that’s starting to change.

There’s a map on the wall of the Cameron community center on the Navajo Nation with nearly one hundred red dots scattered all over it. They mark abandoned uranium mines. More than 500 of these mines exist on the reservation. They’re linked to cancer and other potentially deadly illnesses. But nobody knows the extent of the emotional trauma of living on land that’s contaminated. That’s the focus of a new project to raise awareness and bring healing through art.

An infection normally found in hospitals might also be spread to humans by their dogs. That’s the finding of a Northern Arizona University team that collected canine fecal samples from all over Flagstaff.