2010 – Page 31 – Oral Cancer News

Smokeless tobacco risks ‘overblown’?

Source: www.tobacco-news.net Author: staff The Wall Street Journal “Numbers Guy” blog said that while smokeless tobacco products remain far less popular than cigarettes in the United States, a collection of products that deliver nicotine without smoke—including dip, chew, snuff and newer items that look more like chewing gum—have sparked a heated debate about health risks. Opponents of these products have presented numbers that suggest smokeless tobacco is an enormous public-health threat akin to cigarettes, while supporters, including some scientists, suggest smokeless items could offer a solution to smoking’s toll on public health. Both claims are based on misinterpretations of the data, said the report. Critics of smokeless tobacco have spoken out recently about elevated risks of oral cancer and dangers these items pose to children who accidentally ingest them. All of these risks appear to be overblown, said the blog, particularly compared with smoking, which is far more likely to kill than smokeless alternatives. But researchers who recommend these products as alternatives for smokers seeking to quit also are relying on hazy figures, the report added. Much of their evidence comes from Sweden, where use of smokeless products has risen in recent decades as smoking, and lung-cancer rates, have fallen. Many scientists who study tobacco use remain unpersuaded that the drop in cancer rates stemmed from the increase in use of smokeless products. In pressing the case for more stringent regulation of smokeless tobacco, a National Cancer Institute physician last week testified before Congress that smokeless-tobacco products can multiply users’ [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-04-26T19:22:22-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Robotic tongue cancer surgery-Mayo Clinic

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 through your mouth, leaving face bones intact.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-04-26T19:14:12-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Is a tobacco company using packaging to target children?

Source: www.packworld.com Author: Sterling Anthony Allegations are that recent product launches by R.J. Reynolds encourage nicotine consumption by children and that that's the company's strategy. In particular, it's alleged that packaging is a core component of that strategy. It's not the first time that R.J. Reynolds has been accused of child exploitation. Remember Joe Camel? But, the more recent allegations are not a case of Joe Camel redux; this time, they address both physical components of packaging—graphics and structure. Of no surprise is that R.J. Reynolds roundly denies the allegations. It is not the objective of this article to judge the validity of the allegations but rather to examine them for lessons and insights. Consumer packaged goods companies (CPGC's) outside of the tobacco industry that view themselves insulated from the controversy are mistaken. There can be consequences that can impact CPGC's, in general. That argument will be developed subsequently, but first, some background. Going up in smokeless Camel Snus (the Swedish word for snuff rhymes with noose) is pasteurized tobacco in small, porous pouches, packaged 15 to a metal box. A pouch is placed inside the mouth, under the upper lip; but, while being smokeless like snuff, Snus does not necessitate spitting. The tobacco juice is swallowed, facilitated by the product's low-moisture and low-salt contents which trigger less saliva and by a variety of "flavors." Snus would seem to address at least two adult groups. One is users of conventional snuff, who want to indulge their desire for nicotine discreetly, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-04-26T12:43:26-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Faltering cancer trials

Source: nytimes.com Author: editorial The nation’s most important system for judging the clinical effectiveness of cancer treatments is approaching “a state of crisis.” That is the disturbing verdict of experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences to review the performance of clinical trials sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. Unless the shortcomings are remedied, some of President Obama’s ambitious health care reforms will be jeopardized and his audacious goal of finding “a cure for cancer in our time” will have almost no chance at all. The most shocking deficiency highlighted by the report, issued by the academy’s Institute of Medicine, is that about 40 percent of all advanced clinical trials sponsored by the Cancer Institute are never completed. That is an incredible waste of effort and money, and a huge obstacle at a time when researchers are developing promising new therapies that must be rigorously tested. These large, government-sponsored studies are supposed to be the gold standard — and very different from the narrow, occasionally biased studies sponsored by manufacturers seeking approval of a new drug. The government-sponsored trials can be invaluable in comparing one therapy against another (manufacturers rarely want to put their products up against a competitor’s), combinations of therapies, or therapies for rare diseases with little commercial potential. So it is especially worrying to hear the experts say that the system — run by the Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health — is so mired in cumbersome procedures that it needs to be completely [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-04-25T06:32:15-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Walk to raise awareness for oral cancer Saturday

Source: www.dailypennsylvanian.com Author: Miriam Nareem Penn Relays won’t be the only on-foot event on campus this weekend. Founded and run by students, the Oral Cancer Awareness Society will be holding their second annual 3.1 mile-long walk on April 24. The walk loops around University City and West Philadelphia. The event has drawn students from Penn, Temple University and other surrounding universities, as well as community members and cancer survivors. Individuals can register to walk or sponsor another participant. All walker registration fees and the majority of sponsorship money goes to the Oral Cancer Foundation. So far approximately $5,000 has been raised. The group will be holding free oral cancer screenings at on Locust Walk with faculty from the school. Additionally, the event will be attended by oral cancer survivors themselves who can share their experiences. Last year, the post-walk festivities featured live entertainment from School of Dental Medicine students. Between classes and extracurriculars, most Penn students do not have time for dental screenings as regularly as they should, Anna Yuan, a Penn Dental student and one of the walk’s organizers wrote in an e-mail. With a disease like oral cancer, regular visits to the dentist are crucial in detection and diagnosis — the same visits most Penn student’s either don’t have the time or resources to make. “When diagnosed early, oral cancer is highly treatable,” Yuan wrote. Missing dental appointments is an even bigger issue for international students who don’t have dental insurance in this country. College freshman Humna Bhojani [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-04-25T06:16:10-07:00April, 2010|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|

Evaluation of a low-cost, portable imaging system for early detection of oral cancer

Source: 7thspace.com Author: staff There is an important global need to improve early detection of oral cancer. Recent reports suggest that optical imaging technologies can aid in the identification of neoplastic lesions in the oral cavity; however, there is little data evaluating the use of optical imaging modalities in resource limited settings where oral cancer impacts patients disproportionately. In this article, we evaluate a simple, low-cost optical imaging system that is designed for early detection of oral cancer in resource limited settings. We report results of a clinical study conducted at Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) in Mumbai, India using this system as a tool to improve detection of oral cancer and its precursors. Methods: Reflectance images with white light illumination and fluorescence images with 455 nm excitation were obtained from 261 sites in the oral cavity from 76 patients and 90 sites in the oral cavity from 33 normal volunteers. Quantitative image features were used to develop classification algorithms to identify neoplastic tissue, using clinical diagnosis of expert observers as the gold standard. Results: Using the ratio of red to green autofluorescence, the algorithm identified tissues judged clinically to be cancer or clinically suspicious for neoplasia with a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 87%. Conclusions: Results suggest that the performance of this simple, objective low-cost system has potential to improve oral screening efforts, especially in low-resource settings. Notes: 1. Authors: Mohammed Rahman, Nilesh Ingole, Darren Roblyer, Vanda Stepanek, Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Ann Gillenwater, Surendra Shastri, Pankaj Chaturvedi 2. Source: [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-04-23T13:32:51-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Poor awareness of head and neck cancer

Source: www.imn.ie Author: Kay Kinsella Eighty-three per cent of those surveyed on their knowledge of head and neck cancer (HNC) have admitted to knowing little or nothing about the disease. The study of 200 Irish people, published in the Irish Medical Journal, showed the majority (96 per cent) of those surveyed identified smoking as a major risk factor to developing HNC, but few (27 per cent) recognised excessive alcohol consumption as a risk. Less than 100 (50 per cent) would have concern about persisting hoarseness or a prolonged oral ulcer, despite them being common symptoms of HNC. HNC is the sixth most common cancer worldwide, with more than half a million new cases diagnosed every year and 200,000 deaths resulting from this cancer annually. Survival rates of the cancer, however, remain low with 50 per cent of those diagnosed with tongue cancer dying within five years. Early diagnosis of HNC could boost survival rates up to 70-80 per cent, however, it is reported that 60 per cent of patients diagnosed with HNC are at an advanced stage of the disease. The study reveals that 98 per cent of the public surveyed desired more information about the disease, however, there is little awareness being raised on the topic among the Irish public. The disease has higher mortality rates than any other form of cancer, including, breast, cervical, and prostate cancer, but these all have higher profiles in the public domain. Note: 1. The study was carried out in the Department of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-04-23T12:29:01-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Alcohol based mouthwash and oral cancer – too much confusion

Source: Scienceblogs.com Author: Francis Mawanda (Please note, this post is an editorial opinion not a news article) If you are like me, you probably always and almost faithfully, include a bottle of mouthwash on your grocery list especially after watching and/or listening to the numerous commercials in the media which claim that you will not only get long lasting fresh breath, but also freedom from the germs that cause plaque and gingivitis. However, many proprietary mouthwashes including my favorite brand contain Alcohol (ethanol) which also gives them the characteristic burn we have to endure, albeit for a few seconds each day, but safe in the knowledge that the product is hard at work killing all the germs that give us bad breath and may cause plaque and gingivitis. But the question I continually ask myself is whether regular or long term use of these products is safe especially after reading the numerous research reports and newspaper articles suggesting a possible link between long term use of alcohol based mouthwashes and oral cancer. Several research studies have reported finding an association between long term mouthwash use and oral cancer (1, 2, 3). For example, in a study conducted by Wynder and colleagues (1), they found a significant association between mouthwash use and oral cancer. A bigger multi-site study by Guha and colleagues (3) comparing participants who reported having used mouthwash to those who reported never having used mouthwash found that individuals who reported using mouthwash more than twice a day were [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-04-23T12:26:22-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

CDC urges 50-state anti-smoking effort

Source: CNN Author: Ann Curley In 2007, the Institute of Medicine, the medical branch of the National Academy of Sciences, released "Ending the Tobacco Problem: A Blueprint for the Nation," stating a goal of eliminating smoking as a public health problem in the United States. The strategies included strengthening and fully activating tobacco control methods similar to the CDC's plans, as well as tobacco regulation. In 2008, the World Health Organization's MPOWER program outlined additional steps that complemented and reinforced the other agencies' recommendations. As an example of the success of these strategies, the CDC cites the state of California, which has one of the oldest comprehensive tobacco control programs. California cut adult smoking rates from 22.7 percent in 1988 to 13.3 percent in 2006. That reduction in smoking accelerated the decline of heart disease deaths and lung cancer incidence in California, compared with the rest of the country. In 2009, 14 states and the District of Columbia implemented an excise tax on cigarettes. Those state tax hikes followed a 62-cent federal cigarette tax hike instituted by Congress in April 2009. Twenty-four states and D.C. have comprehensive smoke-free laws. Seven states do not have statewide smoke-free laws of any type: Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming. While some progress has been made in getting more states to implement tobacco control measures, the report stresses that much more is still needed. The CDC's Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs 2007 noted that states could plan and [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-04-23T11:17:16-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

West Michigan woman serves as test subject for voice recreation

Source: www.wwmt.com Author: staff For Steve and Annet Shannon it's a chance to maintain normalcy, and regain a voice that could be lost. Five years ago Annet Shannon was diagnosed with a rare form of tongue cancer, and doctors removed 30% of the back of her tongue followed by a series of radiation treatments, which Steve Shannon says were working, "Everything was going well with no evidence of recurrence until this last December where she found a lump on her neck. To make a long story short she will be having surgery May 4, 2010. There is a possibility she could be losing her tongue and voice box and her ability to speak." For the Shannons it's a grim reality that Annet's surgery could take her voice, but the couple had at least heard of famed film critic Roger Ebert, who lost his jaw to cancer surgery, but was given a new custom text to voice device where he was able to communicate using his own voice. To Steve Shannon, that seemed like just the thing for them, "My wife was very interested in this technology and she was searching to learn more. By fate we met Professor John Eulenberg, director of MSU's Artificial Language Lab. The Artificial Language Lab has begun a project as one of five sites to help people to create their own personal text-to-speech software systems." The Shannons learned that the underlying technology was created by Tim Bunnell and his team at the University of Delaware [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-04-23T08:45:18-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|