Health

After more than a decade studying a rare eye cancer that produces some of the hardest-to-fight tumors, researchers from University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have found a treatment that works on some patients and, more importantly, a tool that can predict when it is likely to succeed.

Q. My father and I have both suffered with canker sores all our lives. I’ve heard of eating kiwi fruit to speed healing, and in a recent column, you wrote about sauerkraut.

Hospitals across Washington state have been hemorrhaging money over the past two years. Just last year, hospitals in the state reported a $1.7 billion operating loss, according to a new report from the Washington State Hospital Association.

Denise Smart’s work as a registered nurse spans more than four decades, taking her from a remote town in Alaska to serving as a military public health officer. Now a professor at Washington State University who is working on multiple research projects, Smart has been recognized for her dedication to her community with the 2024 YWCA Women of Achievement Science, Technology and Environment award.

The strike at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center is scheduled to begin Monday. Starting at 2 p.m. the hospital’s 500 technical workers are expected to walk out and begin picketing their employer.

With chants of “We are the heart of Sacred Heart,” the Providence hospital strike launched Monday afternoon.

Dozens of Spokane-area high school students gathered at the UW School of Medicine Friday afternoon to learn what it means to have a career in health care.

Both sides are hurdling toward a strike as contract negotiations have halted between Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and the union representing the hospital’s technical workers.

Amid increased scrutiny on PFAS levels in city drinking water, Spokane is joining a lawsuit against the companies that manufacture the dangerous chemical.

Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center’s technical workers have submitted notice to strike beginning next Monday as contract negotiations stall.

For years, local concerns over dangerous substances infiltrating drinking water have been on the West Plains, where firefighting chemicals seeped into the ground at the Spokane International Airport and Fairchild Air Force Base.

Many older adults rely on opioid pain medications to help relieve short-term pain or for persistent chronic pain. But seniors might not be the first group that pops into your head when you think about overdose or dependence on opioid drugs. Realistically, they have just as much risk (and sometimes more) of dependence, substance use disorder and overdose as any other person prescribed opioid pain medication.

Public water systems across the country will be required to test for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances under new federal regulations announced Wednesday.

Caitlin Quaempts, a new Spokane medical school graduate, has lined up a family medicine residency this June for a path she hopes leads back to the Yakama Nation. After her three-year residency in Klamath Falls, Oregon, she'd like to be a family practice doctor for tribal members – just as her father has. She is a Yakama direct descendent of her dad, Rex Matthew Quaempts, a longtime family doctor for Indian Health Services. Another classmate, Lili Szabo, recently matched to a Spokane internal medicine residency with Providence Sacred Heart, and she hopes to remain here. Both Quaempts and Szabo are among a 2024 class of 60 graduates from the University of Washington School of Medicine's Spokane site. They celebrated "match day" on March 15 for their selections into medical residency programs.