Insurance Medicine

What is Chronic Granulomatous Disease, and what are the mortality implications?

Liquid biopsies are noninvasive tests that could potentially lead to early detection of cancer by identifying the genetic material cancerous tumors shed into the bloodstream and other bodily fluids. It is now possible to test  for biomarkers such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). As these tests gain a foothold in clinical practice, insurance professionals must understand liquid biopsies and the implications for underwriting and product development.

Insurers design critical illness policies with the intention being to cover medical conditions that are likely to have a life-changing impact on the life insured, with payment alleviating financial pressure as recovery and adjustment to an altered way of life take place. Should insurers include lower risk prostate cancer in such products or are they well positioned to exclude these altogether, considering the favorable outcome?

The American College of Cardiology and The American Heart Association published the new “2017 Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults” on November 13, 2017. The new guidelines propose lower thresholds for diagnosing and lower goals for treating hypertension than the previous recommendations of 2003, especially for individuals at high risk for adverse future cardiovascular events.

In a new inFORM publication, SCOR Life division experts Dephine Labojka and Dr. James Kadouch discuss the most common heart valve diseases, their etiology, and the efficiency of surgery.

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory autoimmune polyarthritis of unknown etiology that targets the synovial tissue of movable joints. It is a member of a class of rheumatic diseases with inflammatory arthritis as a primary symptom, but it may also affect other organs of the body.

First time in more than 50 years that it fell twice in a row; deaths linked to synthetic opioids doubled from 2015 to 2016

Age remains the most consistent risk factor for ischaemic stroke. Surprisingly then an estimated 10% of diagnoses are now seen in people below the age of 50.

Traditionally, cancer is treated by surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy. However, some of the most exciting breakthroughs are now being made using another type of treatment called immunotherapy. This treatment is well established in other medical conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and allergic asthma. Numerous sources now declare immunotherapy to be a “game-changer” in cancer treatment and we will discuss that here.

This article reviews key advances in the management of non-small-cell lung cancer and the clinical gains in outcomes as well as the ability to deliver personalized cancer treatment.