Agusta University Speech Therapy program helps cancer patients with speech and swallowing problems

Source: www.augustachronicle.com Author: Jozsef Papp, Augusta Chronicle After getting surgery in April for cancer of the oral cavity, Lenny Schaeffer was having problems opening his mouth wide enough to eat anything larger than a grape. He went through the whole process: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. During that process, he lost his ability to open his mouth, and it even affected his speech. An oncologist and his radiation therapist informed him of a new program, speech therapy, at the Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University that could help him. “What the speech therapy program did is basically give me exercises to do to increase the flexibility that I have in my mouth,” he said. “It allows me to eat better, more kinds of food and also improve speech.” Dr. Sarah Smith, a speech pathologist at the Georgia Cancer Center, said the program is aimed at helping cancer patients like Schaeffer, patients who have cancer of the neck and mouth area and are suffering from exposure to radiation during their treatment. As a National Cancer Center Network Facility, the center was called to have a multidisciplinary approach to treating cancer, Smith said. Smith was moved to the cancer center in the summer, mainly to keep cancer patients from walking from the center to the hospital because of COVID-19. “Treating head and neck cancer is very different than treating other types of disabilities," she said. "When cancer patients come to the cancer center, we offer a variety of providers, right on site, [...]

2020-12-20T20:37:18-07:00December, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Harvard doctor’s startup trains hospitals to rehab cancer survivors

Source: www.bloomberg.com/ Author: John Tozzi Sandra Wade, a Florida social worker, was diagnosed with an incurable form of breast cancer a decade ago. Two surgeries and years of chemotherapy left Wade, 61, with a damaged heart, chronic swelling in her left arm, spinal arthritis, nerve damage and fatigue, among other problems. “They didn’t send me home well,” she says. “They sent me home sicker than I began.” Survivors of strokes, heart attacks and traumatic injuries routinely get rehabilitation to improve their strength, energy and functioning. For cancer patients, it’s a rarity. It wasn’t always this way. “We used to have better cancer rehabilitation than we do now,” says Dr. Catherine Alfano, a program director at the Office of Cancer Survivorship at the National Cancer Institute. Before the 1980s, when most cancer treatment involved long hospital stays, survivors would get rehab before being discharged. As treatments improved and outpatient care became more common, Alfano says, “those programs kind of disappeared to a large extent.” Now the medical world is recognizing that the 12 million cancer survivors in the U.S. can benefit from more comprehensive rehab. Six years ago the Institute of Medicine called for giving every survivor a “care plan” to manage the lasting consequences of treatment, and this year the American College of Surgeons made such post-treatment attention to quality of life a requirement for its 1,500 accredited hospitals. Dr. Julie Silver, a Harvard Medical School rehab physician who survived breast cancer herself, is one of the pioneers trying to [...]

2011-12-18T12:35:12-07:00December, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Man wins £18k on tv game show after tongue cancer op

Source: www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk Author: staff For a man who had to learn how to talk again, there can be few greater tests than speaking on a TV game show beamed across the nation. But Maurice Paulson passed with flying colours – and won £18,000 and praise from Noel Edmonds in the process. The 81-year-old appeared on Channel 4's hit show Deal or No Deal having been taught how to speak again following an operation on his cancer-ridden tongue. Maurice said the show was great fun and that his appearance was a reward for the hard work Derby's doctors and nurses had put in to help him recover. Although he speaks with a rasp, every word is intelligible as long as he speaks slowly and enunciates. He said: "Noel said I was very brave for coming on. I didn't think so at the time – if people don't understand me now there's nothing I can do about it. The crowd were brilliant though. I won £18,000 and they all came down from their seats and hugged and congratulated me." Maurice, of Stenson Fields, was stunned when he was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2004. He said: "I had gone for a check-up because my neck kept swelling up and then going back to normal again. It's not the sort of thing you imagine would be cancer. "They asked me if I drank or smoked. But I gave up smoking decades before and, despite being a landlord for three pubs in my time, [...]

‘Mama!’ First word of boy with tongue built out of his tummy muscles

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk/health Author: Angela Epstein A child's first words are memorable for any parent. But when Daniel Sewell said 'mama' for the first time, his parents had more reason than most to rejoice. Just 12 weeks earlier, their then 19-month-old son had undergone pioneering surgery to rebuild his tongue after first having an operation to remove a cancerous tumour. The family had been warned he might never be able to speak. So Daniel's first word was a monumental achievement. 'I just couldn't believe it,' says his mother Alison. 'That single word meant there was hope that the horrors of the previous months might finally be behind us.' Daniel Sewell and mum Alison Nearly 5,000 people are diagnosed with mouth cancer annually. While other cancers have seen a drop in mortality rates, those for mouth cancer have remained at more than 1,500 deaths a year for a decade. It is often triggered by smoking and drinking - alcohol and nicotine damage the mouth lining, causing cell changes - and is almost unheard of in children. So when Daniel, the youngest of the couple's five children, began having trouble sucking on a bottle, cancer was the furthest thing from his parents' mind. 'With the benefit of hindsight, it was clear that something was bothering him,' remembers Alison, 43, a housewife, who lives with her husband Richard, 42 a shop fitter in Crook, County Durham. 'But at the time we just put it down to teething. I'll always feel terribly guilty about that.' [...]

2008-12-09T07:15:12-07:00December, 2008|Oral Cancer News|
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