surgery

What accounts for racial differences in head/neck cancer?

Source: www.drbicuspid.com Author: DrBicuspid Staff Why are African-Americans more likely than Caucasians not only to be diagnosed with head and neck cancer, but also to die from the disease? While the answer isn't a simple one, differences in lifestyle, access to care, and tumor genetics may be partly to blame, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital. The study, which was presented September 14 at the American Academy of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery Foundation's annual meeting in San Francisco, also found that African-Americans are more likely to be past or current smokers, one of the primary risk factors for head and neck cancer. "We're really trying to understand why African-Americans with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma do so poorly," said lead author Maria Worsham, PhD, director of research in the department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery at Henry Ford, in a news release. "Using a comprehensive set of risk factors that are known to have some bearing on the disease, we're able to gain a better understanding of what contributes to racial differences and work to help improve patient care." This year alone, it's estimated that 52,140 new cases of head and neck cancer will be diagnosed, and roughly 11,460 will die in 2011 from oral cavity and pharyngeal and laryngeal cancers, she and her team members noted. African-Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and have a worse five-year survival rate than Caucasians. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-09-19T19:21:47-07:00September, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Aerosmith’s Bassist is Treated for Tongue Cancer with Laser Surgery

Source: KSAT.com Aerosmith will be performing in Mexico and South America this fall and one of the band members will be along for the tour thanks to a radical medical procedure. In one Aerosmith song, bassist Tom Hamilton sends a message to his throat and tongue cancer with the lyrics "you've got no business with me." Five years ago, Hamilton underwent chemotherapy and radiation for tongue-base cancer, but it came back and extended into his voice box. That is when he turned to Dr. Steven Zeitels. "This is not your classic way, or even traditional way, to try and remove a cancer from the tongue base," Zeitels said. Radical surgery was now Hamilton's only option. But that could leave his voice and breathing passage permanently damaged. "I was just terrified," Hamilton said. "I really though, 'Oh, I am looking at not being able to talk.'" Zeitels has treated vocal cord cancer with the green-light KTP laser, so Hamilton agreed to be the first person treated that way for tongue base cancer. The laser emits a green light, which is concentrated in the extra blood running through the cancer. "Where there is a lot of cancer, there will be a lot of blood," Zeitels said. "Where there is a lot of blood, there will be a lot of combustion so that you are actually watching the tissues burn completely different" But not everyone is a candidate for this surgery. "The second I had a tiny bit of consciousness, the first thing I did was make [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-08-09T10:30:12-07:00August, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Michael Douglas Continues to Put Oral Cancer in the Spotlight

Source: Dr.Biscupid.com Actor Michael Douglas' recent revelation that he had stage IV oropharyngeal cancer has highlighted the growing incidence of oral cancer, and experts say dentists can help stem the alarming increase of the disease by checking for it during routine examinations. The actor's cancer included a walnut-sized tumor at the base of his tongue, requiring radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and surgery. Douglas says his doctors told him he had an 80% survival rate if it hadn't spread to his lymph nodes. While tobacco was the prime cause of oral cancer in the past, recent studies have attributed the steady increase of the disease to the human papillomavirus (HPV16). There are approximately 130 versions of HPV but only nine cause cancers, and the HPV16 version causes almost half of the oral cancers in the U.S., said Brian Hill, executive director of the Oral Cancer Foundation. "Tobacco is no longer the only bad guy," he told DrBicuspid.com. “HPV16 is increasing in incidence as the causative etiology, and if it continues on this trend line, it will replace tobacco as the primary cause of oral cancers." Dentists can play a key role in catching the disease in its early stages if they check for it during examinations, Hill pointed out. "But many dentists think it's such a rare disease that they don't bother to screen for it," he said. "Most Americans have never even heard of oral cancer, but it's not as rare or uncommon as people would like to think it is. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-06-23T20:17:05-07:00June, 2011|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|

Matthew Algeo’s ‘The President is a Sick Man’ vindicates an old story, and its reporter

Source: www.cleveland.com/books Author: teve Weinberg Stephen Grover Cleveland, born in 1837, would become one of the most unusual U.S. presidents, in multiple ways. Living in the east, he planned to make his way to the boomtown of Cleveland, in 1854, seeking riches. His prospects looked good, given the influence of his distant relative, Moses Cleaveland, often credited with founding the city. The young man never made it past Buffalo, N.Y., however, where an uncle made him an employment offer. The rest of his life, Grover Cleveland (he dropped Stephen in favor of his middle name) would be bound up in New York state politics, except when he spent two nonconsecutive terms in the White House, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897. Matthew Algeo, a historian and radio journalist, focuses on a dramatic, little-known event in his new book, "The President Is a Sick Man." Algeo, a strong writer, nevertheless saddles his work with a ponderous subtitle "Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth." Suffering from mouth cancer in 1893, Cleveland disappeared to undergo surgery on the yacht of a friend. The president, his doctors and political advisers feared that news might exacerbate a financial recession and trigger panic. Cleveland's popular wife, Frances, young enough to be his daughter, lied to journalists about the president's whereabouts. Cleveland's press aide lied, too. Reporters accepted the falsehoods, misleading the citizenry into believing the nation's leader vanished for five days to undergo [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-06-18T11:22:17-07:00June, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Certain head and neck cancer patients benefit from second round of treatment

Source: www.eureka.org Author: press release A new study has determined predictors that can better identify patients who will benefit from a potentially toxic second course of treatment, which offers a small but real chance of cure in select patients with head and neck cancer. Published early online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings could help guide treatment decisions for head and neck cancer patients. Radiation is often used to treat patients with head and neck cancer. If their cancer reappears, they have limited treatment choices: chemotherapy is not curative, and surgery can be curative but is often not possible. Chemotherapy and a second course of radiation have previously been shown to be another option. Joseph Salama, MD, formerly of the University of Chicago, and his colleagues conducted an analysis of prior studies to determine how patients tolerate this second round of treatment and which patients benefit the most from it. The investigators analyzed data from 166 patients with head and neck cancer who received a first round of radiation followed by a second round plus chemotherapy because their cancer recurred or they developed a new tumor. The second course of treatment could cure approximately 25 percent of patients at two years, but it was quite toxic. (Some patients lost the ability to speak or swallow. In addition, approximately 20 percent of patients died from treatment-related complications.) Certain patients benefited from the treatment over others. Those who were cancer-free for a longer period of time, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-06-13T21:30:52-07:00June, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Targeting Cancer Treatment

Source: Medical News Today Cancer treatment is depending more and more today on specific factors of a patient's tumor, including gene mutations, or proteins that are commonly typical of certain cancer cells, rather than focusing on where in the body the cancer started. Before, treatment was based on finding where in the body the cancer originated, such as the breast or lung. Targeted therapy is all about the cancer's genes, tissue environment that contributes the tumor's growth and survival, and its proteins. Nowadays, cancer therapy is designed to interfere with a signal that tells the cancer cells not to die or tells it to divide, while before, chemotherapies had the goal of interfering with cancer cells as division was already underway, when the cells were dividing into new ones. The human body is made of various types of cells, including skin cells, brain cells, or blood cells. Each one has a specific function. Cancer occurs when healthy cells change and start growing out of control; they eventually form a tumor - a mass. A benign tumor is noncancerous, whereas a malignant one is cancerous, it can spread to other parts of the body. Cancer cells either divide too quickly or do not die when they should do Specific genetic mutations within a cell change the way it behaves. When the genes that control cell division mutate (change), they can multiply too quickly; the cell has become cancerous. Cells are genetically programmed to die, when the specific genes that tell the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-06-13T09:47:33-07:00June, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Study findings may change surgical practice

Source: www.digitaljournal.com Author: press release Currently, about 30 per cent of patients who receive oral surgery have their cancer recur. But a new, Canada-wide surgical trial using a new approach to remove tumours and pre-cancerous cells from the mouths of those diagnosed with early-stage oral cancer offers new hope for patients. The Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI) announces the launch of a $4.7 million Pan-Canadian Phase III clinical trial aimed at improving outcomes for patients undergoing surgery for oral squamous cell cancers. The Canadian Optically Guided Approach for Oral Lesions Surgical Trial (The COOLS Study) has the potential to revolutionize clinical practice here and around the world for this kind of cancer. "Our investment in this promising study is our response to a serious clinical concern expressed by head and neck surgeons across Canada and it has the potential to change surgical practices for cancer of the mouth nationally and internationally," said Dr. Victor Ling, TFRI President and Scientific Director. Using a new surgical approach guided by an existing hand-held light tool, the surgeons, pathologists, and scientists involved in this nine-centre study will determine whether recurrence is reduced when they shift the surgical field for the removal of tumours or pre-cancerous cells in the mouth. The surgeons will use fluorescence visualization (FV) or "blue light" provided by the optical aid rather than traditional white light to determine the tissue to be removed. Under the blue light, normal tissue generates a fluorescence which is absent in tumour or pre-cancerous tissue. The [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-05-27T05:26:01-07:00May, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Spouses of Head/Neck Cancer Patients More Inclined to PTSD

Source: MedScape Today Partners of patients with newly diagnosed head and neck cancer are significantly more likely to meet research criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than patients themselves, according to a study presented here at the Society of Behavioral Medicine 32nd Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions. Donna Posluszny, PhD, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and colleagues from there and from the University of Texas, Arlington, Texas, found that 8 of 20 partners of patients with head and neck cancer (20%) had a mean score on the PTSD Checklist (also known as the PCL) of 50 or higher, compared with only 2 of 40 patients (5%). Patients who score at least 50 on the PCL meet the criteria for PTSD. "This is not a formal diagnosis of PTSD but for research purposes, a score of 50 or higher is meaningful," Dr. Posluszny told delegates. "And we were very surprised to find that partners of patients with newly diagnosed head and neck cancer experience greater amounts of traumatic stress than patients themselves do." For the study, investigators recruited 40 dyads (2 individuals regarded as a pair) where the partner was considered to be a "romantic" partner. Some 78% of the patients were male, while most partners were female; all but a small minority were married. Almost all were white, and, as a cohort, they were somewhat better educated and made more money than the majority of patients with head and neck cancer. Sixty-five percent of them also had [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-05-09T09:49:39-07:00May, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

HPV is now the leading cause of oral cancer in the US: learn the facts.

Source: New York Daily News HPV, otherwise known as the human papillomavirus, is a leading cause of cervical cancer for women but the nasty virus is now causing a spike in oral cancer and ravaging an entirely different group: men. Cases of oral cancer resulting from exposure to the HPV-16 strain of the virus are hitting epidemic proportions in the U.S., doctors say. Though the mention of oral cancer evokes images of gravely-voiced chain-smokers, the disease now has a new face: mostly white, male, non-smokers in their late 30s and early 40s. The tumors forming on the back of their tongues and tonsils have nothing to do with nicotine – they are directly linked to engaging in oral sex with multiple female partners. "If you've had more than five or six sexual partners, you are at a higher risk," Dr. Eric M. Genden, professor and chair of head and neck surgery at Mount Sinai Medical center told the Daily News. "We're only now beginning to see the beginning of a bell curve." Women can get it from men as well although their chances are lower, according to doctors. The human papillomavirus (HPV), a nasty bug with strains that causes genital warts and cervical cancer in women, is now the top cause of oral cancer in men, beating out smoking and drinking, according to reports from the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of Oncology as well as other research and treating institutions. The number of smokers in the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-04-21T13:52:00-07:00April, 2011|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|

Patient who loses jaw to oral cancer from smoking tells her story

Source: Los Angeles Times By: Milton D. Carrero, The Morning Call Look at Christine Brader's deep, amber eyes and you will see her beauty. Look beyond her contorted lips, and the jaw she lost as a three-time oral cancer survivor. Radiation took away her teeth, but she smiles. "I still feel like I've lost a great deal, she says, "but I'm still alive. And as long as I am alive, I am going to do what I can to help other people." Brader, 48, is sharing her face, her story and her time to tell the world about the dangers of smoking. The South Whitehall woman, who smoked about half-a-pack a day for 28 years, is featured in the national Truth campaign. Sponsored by the American Legacy Foundation, the series of ads present the unsweetened reality of those living with a serious illness caused by smoking. Brader's life is testament of resilience against oral cancer — a disease that, in five years, kills more than half of the 37,000 Americans diagnosed with it yearly, according to the Oral Cancer Foundation. "I still may not make it," she says, "and I don't have another chance in me. If I get it again, I'm done." Brader's life seemed idyllic until she discovered she had cancer. She had a stable job, a beautiful house in the woods and two teenage children who inspired her. But in 2007, she went to her family doctor, believing that she had a sinus infection. Her situation [...]

Charlotte Parker2017-03-29T19:08:10-07:00April, 2011|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|