Battling Cancer

Ovaries are the small almond shaped glands that attach to the uterus via the fallopian tubes. They produce eggs and hormones.

According to the American Cancer Society, a woman’s risk of getting ovarian cancer in her lifetime is 1 in 71. The National Cancer Institute estimates that in 2008 there will be 21,250 new cases diagnosed and 15,520 deaths.

More →

He can be any man.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men after lung cancer, affecting one in six men in the U.S.

He is rarely under the age of 40, usually over 50 and in fact two-thirds of all cases are diagnosed in men over 65.

60 to 61% of the time he is an African American male.

He is twice as likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer if he has/had a father or brother with the disease. There is also an inherited gene for prostate cancer, affecting 5 to 10 % of all diagnosed cases. While research into genetic testing is promising, it is not yet available.

For more information on who is prostate cancer see the Prostate Cancer Foundation site.

The Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada offers a risk assessment quiz on their website.

More →

Thanks to Lesly Maranan, for passing this along!

From the desk of Dan Ollendorf, MPH, ARM, Chief Review Officer, Institute for Clinical & Economic Review

I am writing concerning the efforts of a new initiative known as the Institute for Clinical & Economic Review (ICER), a new initiative of Harvard Medical School, that seeks to provide an impartial review of new or emerging healthcare technologies that involves ALL relevant stakeholders (including patients). We are currently evaluating permanent brachytherapy and proton beam therapy for prostate cancer, and would like to include patients who have undergone each of these treatments in our discussion.

More →

I’ve been fortunate in the last month to be blessed with some really good circumstances: a relocation to a new city with great opportunities, employment in a situation that lets me blend the two things that I’m most interested in (science and writing), and the welcome surprise of moving into a great apartment that me, my husband, and my two parrots love.

My family has always instilled in me the sense of giving back when one has been so blessed, so in that spirit of giving, I signed up today to be a volunteer at my local hospital. Incidentally, my local hospital happens to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Clinic, America’s #1 Best Hospital for cancer treatment according to the 2007 US News & World Report. My orientation session is this Friday, and I’m really excited to start. . . and I’d like you to come and join me as a new volunteer!

More →

The Tepeyac Project was a faith-based health care initiative aimed at encouraging Latina women in Colorado to have breast cancer screenings. The results of the project, which ran from 1999 to 2005, has just been published in the October issue of the journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

Over two hundred Catholic churches received culturally-tailored information about breast health either via printed packets or through on-site educators during the participation in the Teypeyac Project.  The study’s investigators at the University of Colorado’s Health Science Center Division of Health Care Policy and Research found that that the use of peer-counselors delivering on-site breast-health education significantly increased the number of mammograms in insured Latinas after adjusting for age, income, disability and location.

More →