tobacco

Coupling head and neck cancer screening and lung cancer scans could improve early detection, survival

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com Author: staff Adding head and neck cancer screenings to recommended lung cancer screenings would likely improve early detection and survival, according to a multidisciplinary team led by scientists affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), a partner with UPMC CancerCenter. In an analysis published in the journal Cancer and funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the team provides a rationale for a national clinical trial to assess the effectiveness of adding examination of the head and neck to lung cancer screening programs. People most at risk for lung cancer are also those most at risk for head and neck cancer. "When caught early, the five-year survival rate for head and neck cancer is over 83 percent," said senior author Brenda Diergaarde, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health and member of the UPCI. "However, the majority of cases are diagnosed later when survival rates generally shrink below 50 percent. There is a strong need to develop strategies that will result in identification of the cancer when it can still be successfully treated." Screening patients for head and neck cancer and lung cancer could improve early detection and survival. Head and neck cancer is the world's sixth-most common type of cancer. Worldwide every year, 600,000 people are diagnosed with it and about 350,000 die. Tobacco use and alcohol consumption are the major risk factors for developing the cancer. The early symptoms are typically a lump or sore in [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2015-01-07T19:39:34-07:00January, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

Ring in the New Year by encouraging patients to quit tobacco use

Source: www.dentistryiq.com Author: Maria Perno Goldie The New Year always brings a sense of hope and conviction to improve our lives. New Year’s resolutions abound. With the New Year come new beginnings, fresh starts, and promises for a brighter future. We try to move on from the losses and trials of 2014, but we never forget. The people we’ve lost will be in our hearts forever, and the trials can be viewed as life lessons and opportunities. As World Oral Health Day (WOHD) 2015 approaches, FDI World Dental Federation wants people to make a healthy New Year’s resolution and reduce their use of tobacco – or give it up completely – as part of the 2015 World Oral Health Day Smile for Life campaign.(1) Tobacco use can significantly increase the risk of many serious oral health problems, including oral cancer, periodontal disease, early tooth loss, tooth discoloration, oral malodor, and a reduced ability to taste and smell. Dental and dental hygiene office visits can create an opportunities to help patients quit smoking and using tobacco, yet dental settings are often not used for treatment of tobacco dependence. The purpose of one study was to evaluate issues that may influence patterns of tobacco-use-related practice among a national sample of dental providers.(2) Researchers surveyed a representative sample of general dentists practicing in the U.S. More than 90% of dental providers reported that they regularly ask patients about tobacco use, 76% counsel patients, and 45% routinely offer cessation assistance. This was defined as [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-12-31T06:50:44-07:00December, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Government anti-smoking campaign cost just $480 per quitter, study finds

Source: www.washingtonpost.com Author: Lenny Bernstein At $48 million, the first government mass media campaign to convince cigarette smokers to quit would seem a pricey luxury, especially since that sum purchased just three months of television ads from March through June of 2o12. But a new study of its cost effectiveness, released Wednesday, determined that it cost just $480 for each smoker who quit and $393 per year of life saved. The graphic videos featured pleas from former smokers who had suffered amputated limbs, oral and throat cancer, paralysis, lung damage, strokes, and heart attacks. One of the most haunting showed Terrie Hall, a 52-year-old North Carolina woman whose larynx was removed after she was diagnosed with throat cancer. In the ad, she spoke with the help of an artificial voice box. Hall later died. The campaign and the analysis were both conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but Saul Shiffman, a University of Pittsburgh psychology professor who has spent decades studying smoking habits, said there is no doubt it was a tremendous bargain for the public and, especially, the smokers who quit or added years to their lives. One standard used in studying such interventions considers them cost effective at $50,000 per year of life gained--more than 100 times the cost of the campaigns. Medical interventions, such as heart and lung surgery commonly needed by long-term smokers are much more expensive than that, Shiffman noted. The money spent on the campaign "would pale next to the money [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-12-11T09:18:54-07:00December, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Hookah smoke increases benzene exposure, risk for leukemia

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com Author: staff Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of mortality worldwide and is responsible for the deaths of 6 million people annually. Hookah smoking, a form of tobacco use that employs a partially filled water jar, has come under scrutiny in a new study, which suggests hookah smokers and non-smokers exposed to the smoke have increased uptake of benzene, a substance linked to increased risk of leukemia. Hookah smokers The study is published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. According to the researchers - led by Nada Kassem, associate director at the Center for Behavioral Epidemiology and Community Health at San Diego State University in California - the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US National Toxicology Program have classified benzene as a Group 1 carcinogen. WHO further report that benzene is carcinogenic to humans, recommending that there is no safe level of exposure. Hookah smoke, however, is a source of benzene exposure and is, therefore, a risk factor for leukemia. The most popular kind of hookah tobacco is known as Moassel, which is sweetened and flavored tobacco that contains about 30% tobacco fermented with molasses and fruits mixed with glycerin and chemical flavors. Kassem and her colleagues note that in the US in 2013, it was reported that 26.6% of male and 23.2% of female college students have used hookah at some point in time. Alarmingly, 8.1% of male and 6.6% of female middle and high school [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-11-25T09:36:27-07:00November, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Study: smoking marijuana found non-carcinogenic

Source: americanlivewire.com Author: staff Smoking marijuana does not appear to increase the risk of lung cancer or head-and-neck malignancies, even among heavy users, researchers reported here. “We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use, more than 500 to 1,000 uses, would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana, said Donald Tashkin, M.D., of the University of California in Los Angeles. But in fact, they reported at the American Thoracic Society meeting here, marijuana use was associated with cancer risk ratios below 1.0, indicating that a history of pot smoking had no effect on the risk for respiratory cancers. Studies have shown that marijuana contains many compounds that when burned, produce about 50% higher concentrations of some carcinogenic chemicals than tobacco cigarettes. In addition, heavy, habitual marijuana use can produce accelerated malignant change in lung explants, and evidence on bronchial biopsies of pre-malignant histopathologic and molecular changes, Dr. Tashkin said. The investigators had also previously shown that smoking one marijuana cigarette leads to the deposition in the lungs of four times as much tar as smoking a tobacco cigarette containing the same amount of plant material. Marijuana cigarettes are not filtered and are more loosely packed than tobacco, so there’s less filtration of the tar. In addition, pot smokers hold the smoke in their lungs about four times longer than tobacco smokers do, Dr. Tashkin pointed out. For the population-based case-control study, they identified cancer cases among people from [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-11-25T09:01:35-07:00November, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Smoking associated with elevated risk of developing a second smoking-related cancer

Source: medicalxpress.com Author: staff Results of a federally-funded pooled analysis of five prospective cohort studies indicate that cigarette smoking prior to the first diagnosis of lung (stage I), bladder, kidney or head and neck cancer increases risk of developing a second smoking-associated cancer. This is the largest study to date exploring risk of second cancers among current smokers. An analysis of five large, prospective cohort studies indicates that lung (stage I), bladder, kidney and head and neck cancer survivors who smoked 20 or more cigarettes a day prior to their cancer diagnoses have an up to five-fold higher risk of developing a second smoking-associated cancer compared to survivors of the same cancers who never smoked. The association between smoking and developing a second primary smoking-associated cancer was similar to the association between smoking and developing a first primary smoking-associated cancer (patients who smoked more than 20 cigarettes per day had a 5.41-fold higher risk of developing cancer than individuals who have never smoked). Notably, current smoking at any level increased the risk of overall mortality across all cancer disease sites. The study, published on November 10 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, affirms the 2014 Surgeon General report's conclusion that patients and survivors who smoke are at a higher risk of developing a second cancer. Clinicians term an individual's initial diagnosis a first primary cancer. A second primary cancer is one diagnosed at some point after the first diagnosis. Second primary cancers are not metastases of the first cancer but [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-11-12T06:41:24-07:00November, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Alcohol drinking in never-tobacco users and cigarette smoking in never drinkers: pooled analysis in the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) consortium

Source: http://cancerres.aacrjournals.orgAuthors: Paolo Boffetta, Mia Hasibe & On Behalf Of INHANCE Consortium Abstract: Cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking account for at least 75% of head and neck cancers. A precise understanding of the independent effect of each of these factors in the absence of the other has important implications, in terms of elucidating the mechanisms of head and neck carcinogenesis and assessing the effect of interventions aimed to control either risk factor.We determined the extent to which head and neck cancer is associated with cigarette smoking among never-drinkers and alcohol drinking among never-tobacco users. We pooled individual-level data across 15 individual case-control studies including 10,244 head and neck cancer cases and 15,227 controls.There were 1,072 cases and 5,775 controls who never used tobacco, and 1,598 cases and 4,051 controls who never drank alcohol. Cigarette smoking increased the risk of head and neck cancers [odds ratio (OR)=2.10, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.49-2.95] among never-drinkers, with clear dose-response relationships for frequency, duration and packyears of cigarette smoking. Approximately 24% of head and neck cancer cases among non-drinkers would have been prevented if these individuals had not smoked cigarettes. Among never-tobacco users, an increasing risk of head and neck cancer was detected for increasing alcohol drinking frequency (p for trend<0.001), but the effect was apparent only at high doses.Our results represent the most precise estimate available of the independent effect of each of the two main risk factors of head and neck cancer and exemplify the strengths of large-scale consortia in cancer epidemiology. *This news [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-10-10T10:36:00-07:00October, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

E-Cigarettes fail to help cancer patients quit smoking

Source: www.cancernetwork.com Author: Anna Azvolinsky, PhD Among cancer patients who smoke, electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) users had greater nicotine dependence compared with traditional cigarette smokers, and e-cigarettes did not help patients quit smoking, according to the results of a study published in Cancer. E-cigarettes have been touted as possible tools for smoking cessation. According to the study authors, these are the first published results on e-cigarette use and smoking cessation among cancer patients and put into question the potential benefits of using e-cigarettes as part of a smoking cessation program for cancer patients. Those diagnosed with cancer who continue to smoke are advised to quit. The uptick in the use of e-cigarettes has raised the question of whether these newer types of cigarettes can facilitate or hamper the ability to quit smoking for good. In the new study, Jamie Ostroff, PhD, of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, examined 1,074 cancer patients who smoked and were enrolled in a tobacco treatment program between 2012 and 2013 at the cancer center. Using a complete case analysis, e-cigarette users were equally likely to still smoke as those who did not use e-cigarettes (odds ratio of 1). Using an intention-to-treat analysis, e-cigarette users were twice as likely to be smoking at the time of follow-up (odds ratio = 2, P < .01). The 7-day abstinence from smoking was 44.4% for e-cigarette users compared with 43.1% for non-users. Patients who were e-cigarette users at study enrollment were likely to be [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-09-24T07:08:11-07:00September, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Update on head and neck cancers, HPV: creating public awareness

Source: www.dentistryiq.com Author: Maria Perno Goldie, RDH, MS Public awareness of head and neck cancer (HNC) is limited, with the lack of awareness including the term head and neck cancer and common symptoms and risk factors, such as tobacco use and human papillomavirus (HPV).1 The online survey of 2,126 randomly selected adults in the United States. Most respondents lacked understanding of the organs or tissues affected by head and neck cancer, with 21% incorrectly identifying brain cancer as head and neck cancer. Only 0.8% of respondents identified HPV infection as a risk factor for mouth and throat cancer, but more were aware of the vaccine. The investigators projected that extensive HPV vaccination could prevent almost 9,000 cases of oropharyngeal cancer yearly. The conclusion was that self-reported and objective measures indicate that few American adults know much about HNC including risk factors such as tobacco use and HPV infection and common symptoms. Strategies to improve public awareness and knowledge of signs, symptoms, and risk factors may decrease the disease burden of HNC and are important topics for future research. The American Dental Association has a pamphlet titled “Get the Facts About Mouth and Throat Cancer.”2 Human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) is a major contributory factor in oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC). The detection of primary OPSCC is often delayed due to the complicated anatomy of the oropharynx. One study examined the possibility of HPV-16 DNA detection in pretreatment and posttreatment plasma and saliva and its possible role as a marker of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-09-17T19:26:13-07:00September, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Top cancer organizations push for FDA to regulate all tobacco products

Source: medicalexpress.comAuthor: Staff The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), in a joint letter responding to a proposal by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to extend its regulatory authority over tobacco products, today urged the agency to regulate electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), cigars, and all other tobacco products and to strengthen the proposed regulations for newly deemed products. "There is no safe form of tobacco use," said Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), chief executive officer of the AACR. "Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States, and among its dire health consequences are 18 different types of cancer. It is imperative that the FDA takes action to regulate all tobacco products. The future health of the American people, in particular our nation's children, depends on it." The AACR and ASCO applauded the FDA's proposal to regulate e-cigarettes. "We believe it is vitally important for the FDA to begin regulating these products, especially because we don't know much about the health effects of e-cigarette use. We are also quite concerned that e-cigarettes may increase the likelihood that nonsmokers or former smokers will use combustible tobacco products or that they will discourage smokers from quitting," said Peter P. Yu, MD, FASCO, president of ASCO. "There are insufficient data on the long-term health consequences of e-cigarettes, their value as tobacco cessation aids, or their effects on the use of conventional cigarettes. Any benefits of e-cigarettes are most likely to be realized [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-08-13T09:48:45-07:00August, 2014|Oral Cancer News|