Charlotte Parker, Author at Oral Cancer News

HSE apologises over diagnosis

Source: Irishtimes Author: Mary Carolan The HSE has apologised to the family of a deceased 59 year old man after admitting a two year delay in diagnosing his cancer and is also to pay over some €102,000 under a settlement of High Court proceedings. John McNeive, Logalisheen, Ballindine, Co Mayo, died in August 2005 four months after he was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth. Proceedings for mental distress and trauma arising from his death were brought on behalf of the family by his widow Eileen. Liability in the case was admitted by the HSE. The court heard Mr McNeive had been referred to University College Hospital Galway in April 2003, where he underwent a number of tests, after attending his GP with a headache. Despite the concerns of his wife, family and his GP, it was not until April 2005 that a biopsy revealed he had extensive cancer. By that stage, the cancer had spread to his spleen and he died on August 13th of that year. Yesterday, in a statement read before Mr Justice John Quirke, Patrick Hanratty SC for the HSE said his clients “acknowledged that there was a delay in the diagnosis of Mr McNeive”. The HSE wished to apologise to the family of Mr McNeive for what had occurred and for all the hurt and distress caused to them, the statement added. “The HSE acknowledges that his family could have done no more to help him,” added counsel. Eoin McCullough SC, for the family, said [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-01-22T13:00:38-07:00January, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

What’s in a cigarette? FDA will study the ingredients

Source: Yahoo Author: MICHAEL FELBERBAUM RICHMOND, Va. – The Food and Drug Administration is working to lift the smokescreen clouding the ingredients used in cigarettes and other tobacco products. In June, tobacco companies must tell the FDA their formulas for the first time, just as drugmakers have for decades. Manufacturers also will have to turn over any studies they've done on the effects of the ingredients. It's an early step for an agency just starting to flex muscles granted by a new law that took effect last June that gives it broad power to regulate tobacco far beyond the warnings now on packs, short of banning it outright. Companies have long acknowledged using cocoa, coffee, menthol and other additives to make tobacco taste better. The new information will help the FDA determine which ingredients might also make tobacco more harmful or addictive. It will also use the data to develop standards for tobacco products and could ban some ingredients or combinations. "Tobacco products today are really the only human-consumed product that we don't know what's in them," Lawrence R. Deyton, the director of the Food and Drug Administration's new Center for Tobacco Products and a physician, told The Associated Press in a recent interview. While the FDA must keep much of the data confidential under trade-secret laws, it will publish a list of harmful and potentially harmful ingredients by June 2011. Under the law, it must be listed by quantity in each brand. Some tobacco companies have voluntarily listed product ingredients online [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-01-19T18:12:08-07:00January, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Research Paper- clinical trial of nicotine patches for treatment of spit tobacco addiction among adolescents

Source: Tobacco Control Author: Staff Abstract Background:This study tested the efficacy of nicotine patches in combination with behavioural therapy for the treatment of adolescent spit tobacco addiction. Prior interventions had resulted in mean cessation rates below 15% at one year. Methods:This study, the PATCH Project, used a three group, placebo controlled, randomised clinical trial design. The control group received a standard 3–5 minute counselling followed by a two week follow up phone call. The two intervention groups received a six week behavioural intervention; in addition, one group received active nicotine patches while the other group received placebo patches. Both groups received quarterly stage based telephone counselling. Results:At one year, the usual care group’s spit tobacco cessation rate was 11.4% (exact 95% confidence interval (CI) 6.1% to 19.1%), placebo patch 25.0% (95% CI 16.9% to 34.7%), and the active patch 17.3% (95% CI 10.4% to 26.3%). When both patch groups were combined, the cessation rate was 21.2% (95% CI 15.7% to 27.6%). The cessation rates for active and placebo patch were not significantly different (exact two sided p = 0.22), while the combined patch groups had a significantly greater cessation rate than usual care (exact two sided p = 0.04). Conclusions:The behavioural intervention proved to be about twice as successful as previous interventions, but the nicotine patch offered no improvement in cessation rates. The behavioural intervention is based on publicly available materials and can be easily adapted for widespread use, particularly in high schools.

Charlotte Parker2010-01-19T11:52:42-07:00January, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Kids may mistake new tobacco products for candy

Source: Clippertoday.com Author: Melinda Williams FARMINGTON — New tobacco products often look like candy, and their packaging may look like cell phones or other electronics. “But there’s no such thing as a safe tobacco product,” Davis County health educator Isa Kaluhikaua told Board of Health members Tuesday. Kaluhikaua brought examples of smoking alternatives to show board members, most packaged in bright colors with appealing logos. There’s Snus, a no-spit tobacco pouch meant to be placed under the upper lip, and Orbs, dissolvable breath-mint sized tobacco, with a camel imprinted on each. There’s also Strips, dissolvable strips, like breath freshening strips, containing tobacco, and dissolvable Sticks. And, there’s an electronic cigarette. The products all contain tobacco or nicotine and have not been approved by the Federal Drug Administration. Kaluhikaua said if a child ingested three Orbs, they would get ill, and 10 could result in serious illness. Yet, she said, they look much like Tic-Tacs and come in a variety of flavors that children may mistake for candy. She said the Federal Drug Administration has not approved most of the products, yet they are being put out on the market pouvez trouver. “Some are designed to fit into creative packaging,” and are marketed as a safe alternative to smoking. Not all the products are on the market in Utah yet, Kaluhikaua said. That sobering message was a portion of Kaluhikaua’s annual tobacco report to the board which indicates that during 2009, only 6 percent of adults and 8.6 percent of youth [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-01-15T12:41:31-07:00January, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

HPV, is it running rampant?

Source: WebMD Author: Bill Hendrick Jan. 14, 2010 -- Cancer-causing human papillomavirus (HPV) spreads readily and quickly among partners in new sexual relationships, new research indicates. Scientists at McGill University, reporting in the journal Epidemiology, say they detected the virus in 64% of couples who reported engaging in vaginal sex for a median of 3.9 months. In 41% of 263 college couples studied, both partners had the same type of HPV, a surprising finding “far more frequent than [the 11%] expected by chance” even though the virus is the most common sexually transmitted infection, the authors write. “[D]etection of the same type in persons initiating a sex relationship would be rare given type-specific prevalence rates,” says the study, whose lead author is Ann N. Burchell, PhD, of the division of cancer epidemiology, departments of oncology and epidemiology and biostatistics at McGill University in Montreal. Along with colleagues from the University of Montreal, Burchell and Eduardo Franco, DrPH, MPH, director of McGill’s Cancer Epidemiology Unit, analyzed self-reported data from partners of 263 couples. The women, college students between 18 and 24, enrolled in the study with their male partners. Women were sexually active with their male partners for no more than six months. Most used condoms, but 9% never used condoms. Self-collected vaginal swabs and clinician-collected swabs from the penis and scrotum were tested for 36 strains of HPV. Among 169 couples for whom at least one partner was infected, the scientists identified 583 type-specific HPV infections. Twenty-five percent of monogamous partners had the [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-01-15T19:49:41-07:00January, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Transoral robotic surgery gets FDA approval

Source: Medgadget Author: Staff The FDA has given the go ahead for surgeons to use robotic surgery for procedures in the throat and nearby regions by going through the mouth. In effect, this is a new indication for the Da Vinci Surgical System from Intuitive Medical, as it is the only robot of its type that can be used to perform the procedures. The transoral applications of robotic surgery have been developed at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where a special center was created to study the subject. Drs. Gregory S. Weinstein and Bert W. O’Malley, Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s Department of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery founded the world’s first TransOral Robotic Surgery (TORS) program at Penn Medicine in 2004, where they developed and researched the TORS approach for a variety of robotic surgical neck approaches for both malignant and benign tumors of the mouth, voice box, tonsil, tongue and other parts of the throat. Since 2005, approximately 350 Penn patients have participated in the world’s first prospective clinical trials of TORS. Head and neck tumor treatments often involve a combination of surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. In many cases, surgery offers the greatest chance of cure; yet conventional surgery may require an almost ear-to-ear incision across the throat or splitting the jaw, resulting in speech and swallowing deficits for patients. In comparison, the minimally invasive TORS approach, which accesses the surgical site through the mouth, has been shown to improve long term [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-01-15T19:49:17-07:00January, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Evaluation of in vitro assays for assessing the toxicity of cigarette smoke and smokeless tobacco

Source: aacrjournals Author: Staff Requests for reprints:Peter G. Shields, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University Medical Center, 3800 Reservoir Road Northwest, LL (S) Level, Room 150, Washington, DC 20057-1465. Phone: 202-687-0003. E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Background: In vitro toxicology studies of tobacco and tobacco smoke have been used to understand why tobacco use causes cancer and to assess the toxicologic impact of tobacco product design changes. The need for toxicology studies has been heightened given the Food and Drug Administration's newly granted authority over tobacco products for mandating tobacco product performance standards and evaluate manufacturers' health claims about modified tobacco products. The goal of this review is to critically evaluate in vitro toxicology methods related to cancer for assessing tobacco products and to identify related research gaps. Methods: PubMed database searches were used to identify tobacco-related in vitrotoxicology studies published since 1980. Articles published before 1980 with high relevance also were identified. The data were compiled to examine (a) the goals of the study, (b) the methods for collecting test substances, (c) experimental designs, (d) toxicologic end points, and (e) relevance to cancer risk. Results: A variety of in vitro assays are available to assess tobacco smoke that address different modes of action, mostly using non–human cell models. However, smokeless tobacco products perform poorly in these assays. Although reliable as a screening tool for qualitative assessments, the available in vitro assays have been poorly validated for quantitative comparisons of different tobacco products. Assay batteries have not been developed, although they exist for nontobacco assessments. Extrapolating data from in [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-12-07T15:03:33-07:00December, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Smokers take their last legal puffs in Virginia restaurants

Source: Washington Post Author: Sandhya Somashekhar It was a gentlemen's protest: Scores of cigar-smokers filed into an upscale steakhouse in Reston on Monday night to light up their stogies over cocktails and beef Wellington and lament that the smoking police had finally come to, of all places, Virginia. Four hundred years after John Rolfe planted the nation's first commercial tobacco in Virginia, and decades after state leaders paid homage to the crop by carving its leaves into the ceiling of the old state Senate chamber, smoking officially becomes illegal Tuesday in the state's 17,500 bars and restaurants. Although the suit-and-tie crowd at Morton's exuded a sort of "Mad Men" cool, it wasn't entirely hard to see why some might have been glad this day has finally come. A fragrant, heavy haze rose as 150 regulars worked their way through the four cigars included with a meal organized as a last hurrah for Virginia smokers. "I've always said, if there's a state that would never pass a smoking ban, it's Virginia," said Manassas resident Ed Bennett, leaning on the polished wooden bar with a cocktail cigar in his right hand. "I lost a lot of bets on that one." Morton's wasn't the only restaurant marking the occasion with a bit of celebratory nostalgia. At Jimmy's Old Town Tavern in Herndon, a Camel rep handed out free cigarettes, and customers were treated to an airing of an old Winston TV ad featuring Fred and Barney from "The Flintstones." Owner Jimmy Cirrito sold [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-12-01T16:52:14-07:00December, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Life-shattering cancer sent PR ‘rock star’ to hell and back

Source: Theglobeandmail.com Author: Michael Posner For 15 years, Mat Wilcox reigned as Canada's queen of corporate crisis management. She sat at the centre of all kinds of tempests - labour disruptions, product tampering and recall cases, the avian flu controversy, and dozens of other high-profile issues. In the prime of life, she was chief executive officer of her own Vancouver-based public relations firm, the Wilcox Group, with a staff of 40 and annual revenues in the millions of dollars. Although she typically worked 80 hours a week, often commuting between offices in Vancouver and Toronto, she was, she says, the picture of good health. And she felt invincible, "fabulous, like a rock star." Then, in an instant, the entire structure toppled over, her confidence shattered. One morning in March of 2008, while putting on her late mother's diamond earrings, she felt a strange lump beside her left ear. She went to an outpatient clinic and was immediately prescribed antibiotics. When that regimen failed to clear it up, her doctor arranged a biopsy. The conclusion was swift and devastating: parotid gland cancer. That grim news was followed by worse: An ultrasound scan uncovered two large, unrelated tumours in her thyroid. In no time at all, Ms. Wilcox's doctors had fast-tracked surgery for her salivary gland cancer and recommended the maximally aggressive radiation treatment for the thyroid. All of a sudden, Ms. Wilcox was confronting the biggest crisis management issue of all - her own life. There was precious little time for [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-12-01T16:15:13-07:00December, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer detecting mouthwash

Source: Ivanhoe News Author: Staff MIAMI (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- For a patient with head and neck cancer, the cure rate is only 30 percent. That's because the disease is often detected in the late stages. Now catching the cancer earlier may be as simple as gargling and spitting in a cup. A new mouthwash may be able to see what doctors can't. Edie Acosta calls them her angels … the niece and nephew who gave her the courage to fight cancer. "They cut from here, all the way down here," Acosta told Ivanhoe. On her neck is the scar where a stage IV tumor was removed less than a year ago. "It seemed bigger and bigger 'til it got to the size of a fist, a man's fist, and I couldn't even move my neck," Acosta said. "You feel like a little bird whose wings got cut and you can't fly anymore. I just, I thought I was really gonna die." For patients like Acosta, late stage diagnosis makes treating neck cancer more difficult. Researchers developed a quick, inexpensive mouthwash to detect head and neck cancers earlier. The patient rinses with the saline mouthwash. After they spit it out, doctors add antibodies that identify molecules involved with cancer. In about 48 hours, if there's cancer detected in the saliva, the molecules show up in color. "We've found that these molecules show up differently in the oral rinses from patients that have cancer compared to patients that don't have cancer," Elizabeth [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-12-01T15:08:56-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

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