taste – Oral Cancer News

Stanley Tucci was “like a ghost in [his] own house” when he had cancer

Source: home.nzcity.co.nz Author: staff The 62-year-old actor - who has three adult children with late first wife Kathryn Spath and Matteo, seven, and Emilia, four, with wife Felicity Blunt - was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2017 and he admitted he reached a period where he "didn't see the point of living" if he would no longer be able to enjoy the pleasure of enjoying a meal with his loved ones again He said: "I was a cranky patient. Because I was miserable. I thought it was never going to go away. And I was like, how did this happen... "There were times when I thought I was never going to be able to eat with my family again. The things I love to do are eat and taste and drink. And I love to do them with the people I love. "If I can't do that, then I really don't see the point of living. "I spent months and months up in my room, listening to everybody. Like a ghost in my own house. People coming and going. And I would go down and I would cook, but I couldn't eat it - but I'd want to cook. "Sometimes it almost made me ill to do it, but I wanted to do it. It was pretty f****** awful." The 'Supernova' star has since gone into remission but there are still some foods and drinks he can't enjoy the way he used to. He told You magazine: "Since I wrote [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-11-30T21:38:56-07:00November, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Throat cancer survivors don’t have to sacrifice ability to swallow and taste

Source: southfloridahospitalnews.com Author: staff Tamarac resident Kenneth Goff was home shaving morning when he felt a small lump on the left side of his neck. “There was no pain, no nothing, but I could feel it by the way the razor moved,” said the 58-year-old father of five and grandfather of eight. “It wasn’t visible at all, but I could feel it right below the jaw line.” After a CT scan at Broward Health Medical Center in August 2020, Goff was diagnosed with HPV-mediated squamous cell carcinoma, a type of throat cancer. This cancer is similar to what actors Michael Douglas and Stanley Tucci have battled. The treatment of HPV-related oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma may include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or combination of the treatments. Ryan H. Sobel, M.D., a head and neck surgical oncologist at Broward Health Medical Center, prescribed radiation to treat Goff’s isolated neck mass. Prior to radiation treatment, Dr. Sobel performed a submandibular, or saliva gland transfer, an intricate surgery only a handful surgeons across the country are skilled at performing. He is currently the only surgeon utilizing this technique in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Dr. Sobel strategically relocated one of Goff’s saliva glands. It was moved about three inches from the right side of his throat to under the chin to place it out of direct range of the damaging effects of radiation. Patients diagnosed with throat cancer face a difficult choice: treat the cancer with radiation and risk losing their ability to swallow and [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-02-24T15:03:37-07:00February, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Taste, smell dysfunction may persist after HNSCC treatment for longer than survivors anticipate

Source: www.oncologynurseadvisor.com Author: Bette Weinstein Kaplan Many people who survive squamous cell cancers of the head and neck (HNSCC) experience difficulty eating and drinking. The problem goes beyond the survivors’ active disease state and into recovery, where it continues to negatively affect their quality of life. HNSCC is the seventh most common cancer worldwide. These cancers are usually found in the oral cavity, pharynx, and larynx. Although often attributed to alcohol and tobacco use in the past, many malignancies seen today result from exposure to the human papillomavirus (HPV). Treatment plans for HNSCC include combination regimens such as chemoradiation or single therapy such as surgery or radiation by itself. Taste dysfunction is one of the most common adverse effects patients report after treatment, and it has a significant impact on patients’ quality of life. M. Yanina Pepino, PhD, professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and her colleagues recently conducted a study on the long-term effects of HNSCC treatment. Their goal was to determine when and if senses of taste and smell fully recover after treatment is completed. Most sensory evaluation studies reported the difficulty in taste and smell should be expected to resolve within several months after cessation of treatment; however, many survivors report continued taste dysfunction more than 6 months after treatment completion. For this study, Dr Pepino and her group recruited 40 survivors of HNSCC who had been treated with radiation therapy between 6 months and 10 years prior to recruitment. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-07-19T19:39:05-07:00July, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer survivors’ tongues less sensitive to tastes than those of healthy peers

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau Most survivors of squamous cell head and neck cancers report that their sense of taste is dulled, changed or lost during radiation treatment, causing them to lose interest in eating and diminishing their quality of life. In a study of taste and smell dysfunction with 40 cancer survivors, scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that the tips of these individuals' tongues were significantly less sensitive to bitter, salty or sweet tastes than peers in the control group who had never been diagnosed with cancer. In a paper published in the journal Chemical Senses, the U. of I. team said this diminished taste sensitivity suggested that the taste buds on the front two-thirds of the cancer survivors' tongues or a branch of the chorda tympani facial nerve, which carries signals from the tip of the tongue to the brain, may have been damaged during radiation therapy. "While most studies suggest that patients' ability to taste recovers within a few months of treatment, patients report that they continue to experience taste dysfunction for years after treatment ends," said M. Yanina Pepino, a professor of food science and human nutrition at the U. of I. "Our primary goal in this study was to test the hypothesis that radiation therapy is associated with long-term alterations in patients' senses of smell and taste." While undergoing radiation and/or chemotherapy, head and neck cancer patients may lose taste buds, triggering a transient reduction in their [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-06-25T10:01:24-07:00June, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Hog jowls and clementines: A bid to awaken cancer patients’ ruined sense of taste

Source: www.statnews.com Author: Eric Boodman The medicines were rich and strange, their active ingredients so particular they sounded fictional. Credit: Molly Ferguson for Stat One regimen involved jowl bits from Red Wattle hogs; the pigs were bred from sows named Fart Blossom and Hildegard, and had spent the end of their lives gorging on acorns, hickory nuts, apples, and black walnuts. Another experimental drug included the flesh of the Ubatuba pepper, picked when it was red as a Santa suit, dried at precisely 90 degrees for five days, and then pulverized, seeds and all, into a fragrant, pinkish powder. These concoctions were meant to be therapeutic — but they hadn’t been devised by pharmacologists or biochemists or even lab techs. Their inventors had no scientific training whatsoever: They were celebrity Montreal chef Frédéric Morin and renowned Atlanta pastry-maker Taria Camerino, who would be facing off in an unusual culinary duel. They’d been challenged to help solve a problem that most clinicians and neuroscientists aren’t able to — the impairment of taste in cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy and radiation. This cook-off in the University of Kentucky’s demo kitchen was the opener for the second annual Neurogastronomy Symposium, which was born over a boozy, late-night chance encounter between neuropsychologist Dan Han and Morin in the chef’s restaurant. Together, they envisioned a conference that would combine neuroscience, agriculture, history, nutrition, medicine, and cooking — to understand the art and science of why we eat what we eat, and how we [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-12-21T09:06:48-07:00December, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer survivors not seeking help for depression

Source: www.dailyrx.com Author: staff Long-term treatment can affect how cancer survivors manage in the world. The fancy phrase for this is “psychosocial functioning.” A recent study looked at how head and neck cancer survivors get along after treatment. Depression is not uncommon among head and neck cancer survivors, researchers found in this new study. However, not many of the survivors in the study sought help for their depression with either antidepressants or therapy. Physicians could assist by screening for psychosocial problems because depression is very treatable, according to one expert. Allen M. Chen, MD, of the University of California, Davis, and now of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, led this study. Dr. Chen and colleagues were looking at the rates of depression among head and neck cancer survivors who had received radiation therapy to treat the disease. “The treatment of head and neck cancer can lead to devastating impact on psychosocial functioning due to the many important structures located in the head and neck region," Tobenna Nwizu, MD, a solid tumor oncologist with the Taussig Cancer Institute at Cleveland Clinic, told dailyRx News. “Functions like speech, swallowing, taste and salivation can all be affected,” said Dr. Nwizu, who was not involved in this study. Treatment can also affect appearance, cause dry mouth and increase the risk of aspiration (sucking food into the airway), according to the authors. For this study, the researchers asked 211 head and neck cancer survivors to complete a [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-08-16T06:11:21-07:00August, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Quality of life of patients with tongue cancer 1 year after surgery

Source: www.joms.org Authors: Zhao-hui Yang et al. Purpose: To study the changes and factors affecting the quality of life (QOL) of patients with tongue cancer 1 year after primary surgery. Patients and Methods: A total of 289 consecutive patients with tongue cancer who had undergone primary surgery from 2003 to 2008 at our hospital were recruited. Patient QOL was evaluated using the University of Washington Quality of Life Questionnaire, version 4. Statistical analysis was conducted using a paired-samples t test and multiple stepwise linear regression with Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 11.5 (SPSS, Chicago, IL). Results: At 1 year after surgery, the appearance, activity, speech, swallowing, shoulder function, salivary, and taste domain scores were significantly lower than the preoperative scores (P

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-06-19T09:25:36-07:00June, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Taste and smell disorders caused by cancer or treatments add to patients’ problems

Source: www.oncologynursingnews.com Author: Delicia Yard Although the mechanisms underlying abnormalities in the senses of taste and smell in cancer patients are unknown, such disturbances clearly decrease quality of life for the majority of cancer patients—and clinicians need to be aware of the problem in order to help a person's recovery. This is the word from a study recently published in The Journal of Supportive Oncology (2009;7:58-65). Jae Hee Hong, PhD, Pinar Omur-Ozbek, PhD, Brian T. Stanek, and coinvestigators from Wake Forest University Comprehensive Cancer Center and Virginia Tech's food science and technology department and biomedical engineering school conclude, “Oncologists who understand the types and causes of taste and olfactory abnormalities may be better prepared to discuss and empathize with these negative side effects.” Altered sensory perception can undermine a person's struggle against cancer by causing malnutrition and anxiety. One study cited by Dr Hong and colleagues found that malnutrition, not malignancy, was the primary cause of morbidity in 20% of cancer patients. Dr Hong and colleagues explain that disorders of taste and odor can result from cancer itself or from cancer treatments, with 68% of chemotherapy patients reporting such problems. But the specific causes of these alterations often remain unidentified. How Senses Go Bad According to the researchers, problems with taste and smell break down into 3 categories: loss of sensitivity, distorted perception, and hallucination. The abnormalities may take the following forms: • absence of taste perception (ageusia) or odor perception (anosmia) • reduced sensitivity to taste perception (hypogeusia) or [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-08-19T12:07:17-07:00August, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Taste, odor intervention

Source: speech-language-pathology-audiology.advanceweb.com Author: staff Cancer and its therapies, including chemotherapy and radiotherapy, may directly alter and damage taste and odor perception, possibly leading to patient malnutrition, and in severe cases, significant morbidity, according to a Virginia Tech - Wake Forest University Comprehensive Cancer Center compilation of various existing studies [Journal of Supportive Oncology, 7(2): 58-65]. One of the purposes of the study, said Andrea Dietrich, PhD, professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) at Virginia Tech, is to provide researchers and physicians with a better understanding of the types and causes of taste and odor dysfunctions so that they can develop treatments for these conditions and improve the quality of life of their patients. According to Susan Duncan, PhD, RD, professor of food science and technology at Virginia Tech, a bad taste in the mouth can lead to poor nutrition because patients avoid eating. Approximately two thirds of cancer patients who receive chemotherapy report altered sensory perception, such as decreased or lost taste acuity or metallic taste. Altered sensory perception causes psychological anxiety and malnutrition, and thus negatively impacts the chances of survival for cancer patients, as reported in an earlier study conducted by Duke University. Dr. Dietrich, an expert on water quality and treatment, as well as the taste and odor assessment of water, has expanded upon her knowledge of this field to include such assessments in cancer patients. She worked with Jae Hee Hong, Dr. Duncan, and Brian T. Stanek of the Virginia Tech Food Science and Technology [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-07-03T05:07:36-07:00July, 2009|Oral Cancer News|