TTHealthWatch is a weekly podcast from Texas Tech. In it, Elizabeth Tracey, director of electronic media for Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Rick Lange, MD, president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, look at the top medical stories of the week.

This week’s topics include characteristics of COVID in the four waves in South Africa, a new treatment for prostate cancer, oral anticoagulants and respiratory infections, and treating advanced untreated melanoma.

Program notes:

0:40 Four waves of COVID in South Africa

1:40 Average age of hospitalized people 36

2:45 Oral anticoagulants and upper respiratory infections and bleeding

3:48 Major bleeding over two times more

4:48 Needs confirmation

5:48 May be another explanation

6:06 Treating men with advanced nonmetastatic prostate cancer

7:10 1,974 patients

8:10 With routine screening will that impact?

8:40 Treating advanced melanoma at time of diagnosis

9:45 Adverse events more common

10:45 Immune checkpoint inhibitors

11:45 Exciting area of cancer treatment

12:30 End