TheDrKittendorf

Boosting to #SciArt

For me, I is easy — insulin. It’s a peptide but small enough to be illustrated, and its medical (and economic) history and significance could fill multiple books.

Some pretty cool #SciArt in this summary figure if I say so myself. I illustrated those breasts on a plane and had been bumped to first class for free and the man next to me kept looking over at what I was doing but never did ask…

I’m even more deeply late and I’m struggling to get the import account login to work. But I had no trouble getting a json export….

An anatomical heart painted digitally

There’s a lot I have to say building up, but for now I will say a belated happy Valentine’s Day. Here’s to a 2026 I hope to fill with more #SciArt than any year in a long time. #MedSky #OncoSky #SciSky

An anatomical heart painted digitally

There’s a lot I have to say building up, but for now I will say a belated happy Valentine’s Day. Here’s to a 2026 I hope to fill with more #SciArt than any year in a long time. #MedSky #OncoSky #SciSky

Transgender and Gender-Diverse Patient Perspectives on Hereditary Breast Cancer Risk Assessment in Gender-Affirming Top Surgeries - PubMed From these themes, we derived actionable guidance to address breast cancer health equity in this population. Enhancing patient education, increasing provider awareness, and developing inclusive clinic...

TB: You can read more about breast cancer genetic screening and top surgery at their recent publication: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41037762/ #ASHG25

Imagine you are in a post-apocalyptic world with zombies. There is a spray you can use to ward off zombies. It works well, but is short-acting.

Someone made a new spray that is more long-acting. You want to test it out to see the difference.

In a departure from my usual #GeneChat content, I will be posting some timeline cleansing #cat content of Magic, who can now go on his walks in the rain thanks to a rain jacket. And thus, our blinds were (sort of) saved. He is a very dainty sir.

Not everyone was at #NSGC until Mon, but several folk thanked me for my question after the late-breaking plenary. Dr Botha is who I cited related to the first speaker’s choice of language. If you were negatively impacted by that talk & want an alternate perspective, check this out. #GeneChat

That’s to say, please stop averaging likert scale scores. This is not meaningful

Note of course that you may still code them 1-5 in order to do calculations, like making them a variable in a regression. They just can’t be treated like they are inherently integers in your approach or interpretations

You cannot treat categorical variables as quantities in your analysis. “Strongly agree” is not inherently a number of things. There’s a diff between qual variables & qual analysis. We use qual & quant variables in quant analysis. Thanks for coming to my TED talk

Though I would like to add that Likert questions etc are qualitative assessments we tend to analyze quantitatively. Likert responses are not quantitative & if I review one more student paper who codes their Likert responses for analysis (eg 1-5) then calls them a quantitative variable I will scream.

people doing research: putting a free-text box on your quantitive survey does not make it "mixed methods" it makes it quantitative with a free-text box

thank you that is all

BlueSky is basically where LinkedIn #wallflowers go to hang out. The kids who just want to make art or get into college without exhaustively self-promoting, becoming class president, & getting crowned homecoming king/queen. Who want to share #science without a sales pitch. #SciSky #MedSky #OncoSky

I feel for all NHS workers & vulnerable NHS patients. Port access has nurses up in my face. I want them to be healthy for me but also w/ staffing concerns both here & there, you’d think keeping nurses healthy & on floor would be priority. Shortsighted moves on both sides of the pond lately.

Oh no, this is too deeply relatable. Also at all the various Kaiser I go to when I don’t have to check in because the receptionist waives me to sit down from the back of the line.

Please consider giving @chestcare.bsky.social a follow!

A figure showing the conclusions of the paper. Part A shows a picture of the difference between top surgery and mastectomy as well as DNA and an MRI, and is titled "Comprehensive education on surgical options, breast cancer risk, and postoperative screening." Part B shows a conversation between a genetic counselor and patient and is labeled "Integration of genetic counselor-driven risk assessment, testing, and pre-operative risk counseling. Part C shows a conversation between a surgeon and patient about top surgery, is labeled "Informed patient-led decisions making on surgical technique balancing risk and aesthetics". Part D depicts and microscope and graph and is labeled "long term quantitative cancer outcomes data." Part E depicts ultrasound and MRI alongside a trans symbol and is labeled: "inclusive breast/chest screening and health spaces"

Please check out our new open access publication in JCO Precision Oncology on the some of the work that informed the CHESTcare prototype!

ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/...

Dozens of eyeballs, dozens of drafts We need to make it obvious to students that revision means success, not failure, as a writer.

I keep having this conversation with colleagues. We need to make it obvious to students that revision means success, not failure, as a writer. 1/

⤵️

New (and atypical) publication on #Disability and rest.

This is by far the most vulnerable thing I have ever shared in circles of colleagues — and my first #CreativeWriting since elementary school — and I would be honored if you took the time to read it.

lnkd.in/geHzVaQF

Also, all my #GeneChat, #OncoSky, #MedSky, #SciArt peeps, please consider following @chestcare.bsky.social for updates on our prototype. We are committed to building personalized, evidence-based, community-collaborative cancer risk education for the trans & gender-diverse population.

What an amazing conference, with so many researchers with great ideas and topics. A little intellectual light in a dark tunnel.

Two androgynous presenting and one femme presenting persons standing near a conference banner that reads "LGBT Health Workforce Conference"

Thrilled to present our research on top surgery, genetics, and breast/chest cancer risk at the #BNGAP LGBT Health Workforce Conference in NYC! Looking forward to sharing updates with you all soon. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 #GeneChat #OncoSky

Offers a more overt contextualization of the implications of our #healthcare #DataPrivacy piece to today’s GC practitioners, as well as examines implications of a host of other factors affecting genetics care delivery in current sociopolitical landscape. #GeneChat #DNAexchange

I am all for safely gathered & analyzed SOGI data. But too readily is this data used nefariously or in ways that could dangerously re-identify the patient contributor. It’s critical that we advocate to prevent our erasure from datasets while protecting individual & community privacy interests.

Half the time we were writing this I was asking myself if we were paranoid. Even though I’ve always known we were not and our patients were not, scientists & clinicians have been looking at me like I have three heads for awhile now. It’s easy to gaslight yourself & say this won’t happen.

Photo showing some of the text of the linked bill from section 68-1-2503 which talks about health clinics needed to report stats about gender related care and patients.

Wildly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, a data grab for #trans health data began making its way through the TN legislature shortly after this piece was accepted: HB 754 / SB 676

www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/114/Bi...