Oral Cancer Foundation News Team – A – Page 30

First UK clinical trial in proton beam therapy

Source: www.icr.ac.uk Author: staff Image: The Proton Beam Scanner. Credit: The Royal Christie NHS Foundation Trust The first proton beam therapy clinical trial in the UK, co-led by The Institute of Cancer Research, London, is now taking place at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester. The trial will determine whether the use of proton beam therapy reduces long-term side effects and improves quality of life for patients treated with radiotherapy for throat cancer. The study, funded by Cancer Research UK with support from The Taylor Family Foundation started last year and, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, is recruiting ahead of target, with 37 patients so far taking part. In total 183 people will take part in the study, about two thirds will receive proton beam therapy, and a third will receive standard radiotherapy. State of the art proton beam therapy Currently all patients allocated proton treatment within the trial, which is called TORPEdO, receive this at the state of the art NHS proton beam therapy centre at The Christie in Manchester, which opened in 2018. Another centre is currently being built at University College London Hospitals. A combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy is usually effective in curing head and neck cancers, but radiotherapy can damage the healthy surrounding tissue. This can result in severe long-term side effects including dry mouth, loss of taste, difficulty chewing and swallowing and problems with hearing. Some patients might need to use a feeding tube for the rest of their lives. Precisely target [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-03-15T14:17:54-07:00March, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Which COVID-19 vaccine is best for cancer patients?

Source: www.mdanderson.org/ Author: Cynthia DeMarco With three COVID-19 vaccines now authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you might be wondering which vaccine is best for current and former cancer patients. After reviewing all available data, MD Anderson medical experts agree that all three vaccines are safe and recommended for cancer patients. So, should you take Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine (J&J), which requires only one dose, if that’s what’s available? Or should you wait for one of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, which both require two doses, spaced 21 and 28 days apart, respectively? According to our experts, the answer is clear: “Don’t pass up an opportunity to get the vaccine, no matter which one it is,” says Anita Ying, M.D., vice president of Ambulatory Medical Operations. “The best COVID-19 vaccine to get is the first one available to you.” Timing matters for cancer patients getting a COVID-19 vaccine Ying’s advice is particularly true for cancer patients, since some may be immunocompromised, making them both more vulnerable to severe infections and more likely to need hospitalization should they contract COVID-19. “The sooner you can start building resistance to the novel coronavirus, the sooner you’ll have at least some protection against it,” notes infectious diseases specialist David Tweardy, M.D. “And that benefits everyone.” For patients in active treatment, a COVID-19 vaccine will likely be more effective when coordinated with their treatment schedules. Those who have recently had surgery should wait two weeks before receiving one. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-03-11T13:18:57-07:00March, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Stress over medical finances tied to worse outcomes for some cancer patients, study finds

Source: www.beckershospitalreview.com Author: Erica Carbajal Head and neck cancer patients who reported high levels of financial worry, or financial toxicity, at the start of treatment were about twice as likely to have worse outcomes, according to research findings published in the April 2021 edition of Oral Oncology. Researchers from Buffalo, N.Y.-based Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center surveyed 284 patients with head and neck cancers to assess their quality of life before and after treatment. The responses were then evaluated in comparison with patients' clinical outcomes. "The association we found was very strong, very concerning," said Anurag Singh, MD, senior study author. "If you are worried about your finances, your risk of dying is roughly double." Researchers performed both multivariable and matched-pair analyses. Results showed those who reported the highest levels of financial toxicity at the start of treatment had worse outcomes in terms of both overall survival and cancer-specific survival. A matched-pair analysis of 66 patients found those with financial toxicity had worse overall survival outcomes, with a hazard ratio of 2.72 and worse cancer-specific survival, with a hazard ratio of 3.75. "We want everyone to be aware of these impacts," Dr. Singh said. "Doctors should consider how financial toxicity may be impacting their patients, and do everything we can to improve our patients' quality of life, and we want to encourage patients to take advantage of financial counseling and every other resource that can lessen their burden." Researchers chose to focus on those with head and neck cancers for [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-03-10T20:34:08-07:00March, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

One in three patients with rare cancer are initially misdiagnosed – survey

Source: www.dutchnews.nl Author: staff One-third of people who contract rare types of cancer are initially given the wrong diagnosis, according to new research. In 10% of cases patients had to wait longer than a year to be referred to a hospital by their local doctor, while 8% were not diagnosed until six months after first seeing a specialist. ‘We understand that general practitioners don’t immediately think of cancer in every case, but where there are persistent symptoms rare cancers should be considered,’ said Ajra Broenland, director of the Dutch Federation of Cancer Patient Organisations (NFK). The survey of 2,027 patients was carried out for the NFK by research institute Integraal Kankercentrum Nederland. Around 20,000 people are diagnosed with rare cancers such as vulva, bile duct, and head and neck cancer. The survival rate is around 15% lower than for more common varieties. Half of the patients who took part in the survey were referred to a hospital within two weeks of visiting their doctor, but in 25% of cases the process took longer than three months and 8% waited for over a year. One in three people had to wait more than four weeks from their first appointment with a specialist to receive a diagnosis. ‘It is important to detect cancer at the earliest possible stage,’ said Broenland.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-03-09T12:52:57-07:00March, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Big Tobacco asks regulator to convince people nicotine isn’t that bad

Source: www.smh.com.au Author: Tiffany Kary Marlboro cigarettes maker Altria Group wants to enlist an unlikely partner in convincing consumers that nicotine isn’t as bad as they think - its regulator. The company asked the US Food and Drug Administration to tackle misperceptions about nicotine as part of a proposed $US100 million ($130 million) advertising campaign to reduce the harm caused by tobacco, according to a letter seen by Bloomberg News. That could be difficult with about three-fourths of US adults incorrectly believing nicotine causes cancer, Altria said in the communication, citing government research. Clearing up the drug’s health risks will be key to the agency reducing smoking because it will help convince cigarette users to switch to non-combustible options for nicotine, the company said. While there are at least 60 well-established carcinogens in cigarette smoke, it’s been known for years that nicotine isn’t the direct cause of many of smoking’s ills. The drug has even been touted as a way to ease tension and sharpen the mind. But nicotine is the ingredient that addicts people to tobacco products, and it has risks, including possibly making people more susceptible to abusing opioids, according to The National Institute on Drug Abuse, a US government agency. The FDA “should commit resources and expertise to correct the deeply entrenched public misperceptions regarding the health risks of nicotine,” Paige Magness, Altria’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs, said in the letter dated February 25. Such a campaign would help the agency by getting more smokers [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-03-07T11:37:16-07:00March, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

A new answer for helping patients with xerostomia

Source: www.dentistryiq.com Author: John Kringel Helping patients with xerostomia can be especially challenging. Set aside for a moment the dental complications that result, such as rampant caries and mucositis. Severe symptoms like difficulty swallowing, sleeping, and talking can ruin the sufferer’s daily quality of life at the most basic level. Yet the available interventions1 come down to lifestyle tips such as sucking on ice chips, chewing sugar-free gum, and using a humidifier at night. Dr. Jeffrey Cash, a dentist in Richmond, Virginia, has experienced the frustration of dealing with xerostomia from multiple perspectives. He was initially moved by his hospital-based residency working with head-and-neck cancer patients. “My conversations with patients who had tried the standard suggestions without finding relief generally went like this: ‘Can’t you do anything else for me? I'm miserable. I can't eat properly. I wake up four times a night because I can't breathe.’ My answer, which felt terrible, amounted to ‘welcome to the new normal.’ ” Within a year of graduation, Dr. Cash learned exactly what these patients had experienced when he underwent chemotherapy as a part of his own cancer treatment. “Shortly after starting chemo, I developed severe dryness which led to mucositis. It was so uncomfortable I didn’t want to swallow or eat anything that would scratch the tissue.” The combined experience as a dentist and a xerostomia sufferer started Dr. Cash on a decades-long mission to invent a new treatment option that would be immediate, continuous, and predictable. That aspiration became a reality [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-03-07T08:24:14-07:00March, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Could fruit flies help match patients with cancer treatments?

Source: www.wired.com Author: Michele Cohen Marill Joel Silverman is facing down a nightmarish cancer prognosis. What he’d thought was a benign cyst in his jaw was actually a rare cancer that grew stealthily, supplanting the bone. And even after the tumor was excised, an undetectable remnant in his bloodstream seeded metastatic lesions in his lungs. His doctors can do little beyond removing the lesions as they appear. This cancer, myoepithelial carcinoma, doesn’t have a standard chemotherapy treatment. Silverman, 59, an internal medicine physician in Boca Raton, Florida, is accustomed to delivering both good news and bad to his patients, so he is realistic about his predicament. But he is also aware that science constantly pushes the bounds of what is possible. His hopes now hinge on a new paradigm of personalized medicine that will use a half million fruit flies to design and test a drug regimen tailored to his specific cancer. Not his type of cancer. His individual tumors. Drosophila melanogaster, the tiny creatures of high school genetics experiments, are actually sophisticated models of human biology. Some 60 percent of Drosophila protein-encoding genes (known as the exome) have a parallel in humans. Drosophila can become drunk or obese, can develop diabetes or Parkinson’s disease, and, with some tricks of genetic engineering, can be induced to develop tumors identical to those in humans. The signaling pathways among cells—the mechanisms that control cellular repair, for example—are the same in humans and flies. “If you find a drug that is going to [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-02-26T19:03:11-07:00February, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Machine learning is giving cancer detection new bionic eyes

Source: www.eetimes.com Author: Adam Benzion It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) — or, as my nerdier friends call it, “the outcome of really good machine learning (ML)” — is changing the way we live; the way we shop, eat, sleep is all monitored and enhanced by AI, and now the medical industry is tapping into the capabilities of AI. Entrepreneurs, hackers, and engineers have discovered new ways to infuse off-the-shelf hardware with ML tools to deliver highly specialized and expensive medical diagnostics in a field that is known for costly equipment and high barriers to entry. Welcome to the new era of AI-powered medical care. Until recently, standard skin cancer lesion screening methods such as radiological imaging (x-rays) could miss the early signs of cancer in approximately 25% of cases, according to research published in the British Journal of General Practice. And in places where there is no access to expensive medical equipment, patients and doctors rely on experience and the naked human eye to perform early-stage cancer diagnosis. Not only does this present a non-standard level of diagnostics, but it also draws attention to the soft belly of medical care — only those who can afford quality treatment will get it. Either way, we are finding that there’s a need for other detection modalities that we’ve never tried before, breaking from traditional methods, and offering the same, top-quality early detection and diagnostics of cancer to everyone equally. Medical care meets computer science Meet Mohammed Zubair, associate professor at [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-02-17T11:39:46-07:00February, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Head-and-neck surgeons buoyant about new, just-right robot

Source: newsroom.uw.edu Author: Brian Donohue You know how great it feels when someone makes a pie or cake just for you? University of Washington Medicine head and neck surgeons have been feeling that kind of love lately, and on Feb. 5 they shared the first slice, so to speak, with patient Steven Higley. Surgical assistants work near patient Steven Higley on Feb. 5. Lead surgeon Jeff Houlton is obscured by the robotics. The cake in this story is actually a da Vinci robotic-assist system built especially for head and neck procedures. It is easier to maneuver than the robotic device they’ve used for the past decade, which was designed for operations to the chest and abdomen. Higley underwent surgery to have a cancerous tonsil and part of his throat removed. Sitting at a console a few feet from the patient, Dr. Jeff Houlton manipulated the miniature surgical tools emanating from the robot’s single port, positioned just outside Higley’s open mouth. It was UW Medicine’s first trans-oral surgery with the new tool. “If you think about laparoscopic surgery in the belly area, robotics provides the advantage of multiple mechanical arms approaching from different angles,” Houlton said. “But it’s a challenge to have three robotic arms that all need to go through a patient’s mouth. With this machine, the three arms are designed to come through one garden hose-like entry port and then articulate out from there. “Pretty interesting, though, that in the past 10 years we built a nationally [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-02-12T18:43:12-07:00February, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

More parents balking at giving kids cancer-fighting HPV vaccine

Source: www.usnews.com Author: Steven Reinberg From 2012 to 2018, more doctors recommended their patients get vaccinated with the HPV vaccine -- from 27% to 49%. But at the same time, the number of parents who were reluctant to have their kids vaccinated increased from 50% to 64%, researchers found. "Overall, more U.S. teens are getting the HPV vaccine, and the nation is making progress towards reaching the HPV vaccination goals; however, if parental reluctance continues to grow, the current rate of our progress might plateau or possibly decline," said lead study author Kalyani Sonawane. She's an assistant professor in the department of management, policy and community health at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. "In the long term, the lost opportunity to protect our teens from HPV might contribute to cases of HPV-associated cervical, oropharyngeal, penile, anal, vaginal and vulvar cancers in the future," Sonawane said. Parents' reluctance to have their kids vaccinated rose more for girls, from 54% to 68%, compared with 44% to 59% for boys, the researchers noted. The report was published online Feb. 9 in the journal Pediatrics. To increase the number of boys and girls who get vaccinated, doctors need to strongly recommend it, Sonawane said. "Further improvements in provider recommendations can be made, given that it is the most important factor for improving HPV vaccine uptake," she said. "Providers should be prepared to tackle hesitancy by conveying the importance of HPV vaccination to parents and debunking vaccine misinformation. Increasing vaccine confidence [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-02-10T10:56:54-07:00February, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Oral Cancer News
Compiled by The Oral Cancer Foundation

About Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A