tumor – Page 4 – Oral Cancer News

At our throats

Source: www.forbes.com Author: Matthew Herper Oncologist Maura Gillison was looking for patients with tonsil cancer for a clinical study several years ago. The first enlisted was a malpractice lawyer, followed by a doctor, then a scientist. She joked to a colleague that all she needed was a rear admiral. In walked a member of the military brass. All were in their 30s, 40s and 50s. People in their prime didn't used to get throat tumors. Head-and-neck cancer, as doctors call it, was a disease of older problem drinkers who also chain-smoked (more men than women). Years of exposure to scotch and Lucky Strikes would damage the DNA of cells lining the throat, leading to cancer. But Gillison, 44, a professor at Ohio State University, was among the first researchers to make a startling realization: The old cigarettes-and-alcohol form of the disease was being eclipsed by a new form, caused by the same human papilloma virus (HPV) that causes cervical cancer. The tumors grow in the tonsils or in the tissue that remains after tonsillectomy. The only good news is that the prognosis for these patients is better than for the old disease. Gillison and researchers at the National Cancer Institute estimate that 4,000 people, 75% of them men, develop this new form of throat cancer annually. That's only a tenth of head-and-neck cases, but it's half as many people as get cervical cancer in the U.S. More worrisome, Gillison's work shows HPV tonsil cancer is increasing at a rate of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-10-15T13:20:48-07:00October, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Robotic tongue cancer surgery

Source: kaaltv.com Author: staff Fighting cancer is not easy. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery can be very hard on your body. Take head and neck cancers, for example. These tumors are often hard to reach. Doctors have to cut through bones such as your jaw to reach them. Now, doctors at Mayo Clinic are using robots to access these cancers leaving face bones intact. Roger Combs may be having a tough time beating his wife Gloria at a game of gin rummy. But he's winning a much tougher battle; a fight against cancer that formed at the base of his tongue. "I really didn't feel badly. I had some difficulty swallowing," he says. Roger's doctors told him the cancer had to be removed. "But the tongue and tonsillar area is a very hard area to get to," says Dr. Eric Moore. Dr. Moore says traditional surgery often involves splitting the jawbone open to access the tumor. "And obviously that's disfiguring, interferes with speech and swallowing and it takes a lot of time to recover, " he says. So instead, Dr. Moore used a robot to remove Roger's cancer. The operation involves lowering the robotic equipment through Roger's mouth to the site of the tumor. While seated at a control panel Dr. Moore then guides the robot as it removes the cancer without damaging surrounding structures. After Roger healed from the operation, he went through radiation and chemotherapy - both of which were not easy. "We've had some ups and downs as [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-12-11T13:29:12-07:00December, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Eating walnuts slows cancer growth, laboratory study finds

Source: news.biocompare.com Author: staff Snack-sized quantities of walnuts slow cancer growth in mice, reports a Marshall University pilot study published in the current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Nutrition and Cancer. Researcher W. Elaine Hardman, Ph.D., of Marshall's Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine said the study was designed to determine whether mice that got part of their calories by eating walnuts had slower breast cancer growth than a group eating a diet more typical of the American diet. "When we fed the mice the walnuts, the growth rate of the tumors they had was dramatically suppressed," Hardman said. The mice ate a diet in which 18.5 percent of the daily calories -- the equivalent of two servings for humans -- came from walnuts. Tumors in the walnut-fed group took twice as long to double in size as tumors in the control group, the article reports. The study is believed to be the first to look at the impact of walnut consumption on cancer growth. "It's always very good to find something that will slow the growth of tumors without being toxic chemotherapy," said Hardman, who has spent 15 years studying the role of diet in cancer. Walnuts have at least three components that could account for their cancer-slowing effect, Hardman said. They are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to slow cancer growth. They also include antioxidants and components called phytosterols, both of which have shown cancer-slowing effects in other studies. While the pilot study was [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-09-30T06:59:48-07:00September, 2008|Oral Cancer News|