Source: www.theze.cn 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 through your mouth, leaving face bones intact.
Source: www.medscape.com Author: Fran Lowry Most patients with locoregionally advanced head and neck cancer who were successfully treated with intensive chemoradiotherapy had no residual deficits in speaking or swallowing after their treatment, according to the results of a study done by University of Chicago researchers. The study appears in the December issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery. Of 163 patients with head and neck cancer who were assigned a speaking score an average of 35 months after completing treatment, 84.7% were found to have no lasting difficulties and were given a score of 1 on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being the best and 4 being the worst function. In addition, among 166 patients who were assigned a swallowing score an average of 35 months after treatment, 63.3% were found to have no lasting difficulties swallowing and were given a score of 1. "We weren't surprised by our findings," senior author Joseph K. Salama, MD, told Medscape Medical News. "However, it was nice to quantify formally our clinical impressions—that most patients in the long run do well." Dr. Salama was with the University of Chicago, Illinois, at the time the study was conducted and is now at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Expert Disagrees However, Robert L. Ferris, MD, PhD, professor and vice chair of the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania, disagreed with the view that so many patients with head and neck cancer [...]
Source: www.latimes.com Author: Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times The percentage of California adults who smoke has continued to drop more than the national average, according to new data released Monday by state health officials. Still, deep disparities exist depending on gender, education, income, ethnicity and region. Overall, Californians remain significantly less likely to smoke than people in the rest of the country, with 13.1% of adults surveyed statewide saying they smoked last year compared with 21% of adults nationwide. The rate was even lower in several Southern California counties, including Los Angeles (10.4%), Orange (10.9%), Ventura (11.8%), Riverside and San Bernardino (each12.7%), according to a 2008 telephone survey. "We have saved billions of dollars in healthcare costs that have been averted," Kimberly Belshé, the state's secretary of Health and Human Services, said Monday at a news conference near downtown Los Angeles to release the figures and display the state's latest anti- smoking advertisements. Still, she said, "these prevalence rates also tell us we have more work to be done." As of last year, California had seen a 38% decrease in smokers since 1990, when public health officials created the California Tobacco Control Program, funded by Proposition 99. The smoking rate is expected to decrease to 12.6% this year, close to the national goal of 12% by 2020. Only Utah reports a lower rate of smokers. The downward trend in California is moving faster than the nation's, which has seen a smaller decrease in the smoking rate, down to 21% from [...]
Source: www.mdnews.com Author: staff It's no secret that people don't want to hear their name and cancer in the same sentence. When Oral Cancer Founder Brian Hill was diagnosed with oral cancer in 1999, he had a lot of questions. Brian recalls, "When I was going through treatment I remember thinking, 'When am I going to get rid of all these sores in my mouth? What about tasting things again?' I was desperate to find someone to talk to who had gone through the same thing I was experiencing but there was nowhere to go." Brian decided to take matters into his own hands and become a student of the disease. With a small budget, he founded the non-profit Oral Cancer Foundation, and launched a Patient/Survivor Support Forum shortly after completing treatment for the disease. Today, eleven years after Brian faced dim prospects as a stage 4 cancer patient, the Foundation's Survivor/Patient forum is the world's largest support group for oral, head and neck cancers. The message boards have thousands of individuals involved; survivors, patients and caregivers, as well as doctors and nurses - posting real-time, asking for, or providing information and support to those just starting on this path. The OCF forum is a free, anonymous, safe environment for patients to get the answers and support they need 24/7/ 365 days a year. Patients and caregivers worldwide are interacting with each other. Currently more than 7,650 members on the forum interact with one another on a daily basis; tens [...]
Source: health.usnews.com Author: staff How people fare when oral cancer recurs depends on where and when the cancer returns, a new study has found. The research included 77 people in Australia who'd had oral squamous cell carcinoma, a cancer that occurs in the thin, flat cells that line the lips and mouth. The cancer was treated with surgery, radiation or both. However, the cancer came back, and they all subsequently had what's called salvage surgery, which is a procedure to remove cancer after an initial treatment fails. The researchers found that people whose cancer recurred at the same site as the initial cancer tended to do worse if the disease returned within six months, whereas those with recurrence at a different site did worse if their cancer came back after six months or more. The overall five-year survival rate after salvage surgery was 50 percent. People who had initially had both surgery and radiation were 1.3 times as likely to die, the investigators found. The median, or midpoint, in time to recurrence was 7.5 months after treatment, and 86 percent of the recurrences occurred within 24 months, the study found. Recurrence occurred at the initial site in 39 people, in the neck on the same side as their initial cancer in 27 people and in the neck on the opposite side in 11 people. "Presumably, the poor outcome reflects a combination of more advanced disease at initial presentation, resistant tumor biology and limited salvage options," wrote Michael D. Kernohan and [...]
Source: www.dental.upenn.edu/ Author: staff Ann Layvey was raised to ‘give back,’ so it seems natural that her academic career at Penn Dental Medicine has been underpinned by community service. “My mom always helped me to see the importance of outreach,” says Ann, who, from an early age, was involved in helping her community in New York by serving those in need. During her undergraduate experience, she volunteered at the New York University Hospital, and has consistently supported community service at Penn Dental Medicine, where it is also an integral part of the School’s curriculum. “By dealing with what concerns others, we define our own humanity,” she says. Tapping into that ingrained altruism, Ann teamed with fellow students to help organize a new outreach program for the School that complimented their studies. In spring 2009, she co-coordinated Penn Dental Medicine’s first Oral Cancer Walk, garnering attention to oral cancer and over $16,000 in donations for the Oral Cancer Foundation. “We modeled this walk on the ones done in New York, Michigan, and Washington, D.C., and were thrilled beyond expectations for our first year,” she says. Nearly 300 participated in the walk, and 75 people came out for oral cancer screenings, effectively raising the community service profile of Penn Dental Medicine and building public awareness about how oral cancer screenings save lives. “This was our first year for this walk, and our goal is to keep it going,” she says. In addition to helping the community in Philadelphia, Ann also put her [...]
Source: BBC Three Author: staff Darren was diagnosed with orophyrangeal cancer, a rare form of mouth cancer at the age of only 31. But that wasn't the only shocking news that he had to deal with. Most oral cancers are caused by smoking or drinking but Darren's cancer was caused by the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) which is sexually transmitted. Darren had caught it through having oral sex. And he's not alone. New research shows that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of HPV-related oral cancers amongst young people. Actress Jaime Winstone sets out to discover why the statistics are rising and whether anything can be done to stop this trend. Having met Darren, Jaime wants to know more. She's sadly got an intimate relationship with cancer as filming began for this programme, her close friend Paul, a DJ, died from pancreatic cancer aged only 26. Whilst his cancer wasn't preventable, Darren's was. HPV is recognised as the cause of cervical cancer in women and so two years ago the Government introduced a national vaccination programme for teenage girls. But if a vaccine exists, why isn't it also given to boys to protect them from developing HPV-related cancers? Although this oral cancer is still relatively rare, the HP virus is common, with an estimated 80% of adults having it, without any symptoms, during their lives. Jaime is a woman with a mission to understand and her journey takes her to meet Dr Margaret Stanley, a world expert on [...]
Source: Archives of Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery Objective To evaluate the prereferral treatment of patients referred to our tertiary care center with recurrent or persistent head and neck cancer for compliance with National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines. Design A prospective recruitment and retrospective chart review. Patients The study included new patients identified at multidisciplinary treatment planning conference from October 1, 2008, to February 1, 2009, who had received prior treatment at an outside institution and presented to our department with recurrent or persistent disease. Main Outcome Measures All facets of prior care were examined, including the time from initial symptoms to diagnosis and whether their prereferral treatment was compliant with or deviated from NCCN guidelines for head and neck cancer. Results A total of 566 consecutive new patients were identified, of whom 107 (18.9%) had persistent or recurrent disease. The average time from first presentation with initial symptoms to diagnosis among patients who presented with persistent disease was 23.8 weeks. Nearly half of the patients who presented with persistent or recurrent disease had either endocrine (21.5%) or cutaneous (24.2%) primary cancers, with the rest of the cases being distributed among 10 other sites. Of the patients who presented with recurrent or persistent disease, 43.0% had prereferral care that was noncompliant with NCCN guidelines. Of these patients, 58.7% had inadequate surgical management, 15.2% were treated for the wrong diagnosis, 10.9% received inadequate adjuvant therapy, 4.4% received inadequate radiotherapy, and 10.9% refused indicated recommended treatment. Conclusions Significant deviation from NCCN [...]
Source: Web MD Taking aspirin over a long period of time can substantially cut the risk of dying from a variety of cancers, according to a study showing that the benefit is independent of dose, gender, or smoking. It also found that the protective effect increases with age. The study is by Peter Rothwell, MD, PhD, FRCP, of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, and colleagues, and has been published online by the journal the Lancet. A previous study by the same authors showed that low doses of aspirin (75-300 milligrams) reduced the number of cases of colorectal cancer by a quarter and deaths caused by the disease by more than a third. The latest study confirms the earlier results and concludes that similar effects can be shown for other types of cancers. The study looked at eight trials examining the effects of a daily dose of aspirin on preventing heart attacks involving 25,570 patients, 674 of whom died from cancer. They showed a 21% reduction in the number of deaths caused by cancer among those who had taken aspirin, compared with people who had not. The investigation also showed that the benefits of taking aspirin increased over time. After five years, death rates were shown to fall by 34% for all cancers and by 54% for gastrointestinal cancers. Participants were also followed up after 20 years, by which point 1,634 of the original participants had died as a direct result of cancer. This 20-year follow-up established that the risk [...]
Source: Archives of Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery Objectives To describe the clinicopathologic features of oral squamous cell carcinoma in patients who develop locoregional recurrence of disease, to identify factors that predict prognosis in the subset of patients treated with salvage surgery, and to determine the adjusted effect of time to recurrence. Design Cohort study. Setting A head and neck cancer institute in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Patients A total of 77 patients who underwent salvage surgery for oral squamous cell carcinoma that had been treated initially by surgery, radiotherapy, or surgery with postoperative radiotherapy. Main Outcome Measures Univariable and multivariable analysis of clinical and pathologic risk factors. Results Median time to recurrence from initial treatment was 7.5 months (range, 0.9-143.9 mo), with 86% of recurrences occurring within the first 24 months. Surgical salvage was attempted in 77 patients who had experienced recurrence at the primary site (n = 39), ipsilateral neck (n = 27), and contralateral neck (n = 11). Time to recurrence, initial treatment modality, and site of failure were independent prognostic variables. Conclusions The relationship of these prognostic variables displays a dynamic interaction. Initial combined-modality treatment and shorter time to recurrence were associated with worse outcome, while the effect of site of recurrence (local vs regional) was dependent on an interaction with the time to recurrence. The result of this interaction was that local recurrence was worse for those who experienced it early (eg, <6 mo after the initial treatment) and nodal recurrence was worse for those who experienced it late (eg, [...]