Battling Cancer

While head and neck cancer is neither as frequent nor as deadly as other cancers worldwide, it is of particular interest to research scientists because of its inherent invasive and metastatic characteristics.

While chemotherapy and radiation are becoming more commonplace, surgery still plays a major role in treatment of the oral cavity and surrounding areas. An otolarygology fellow that I worked with once in a head and neck cancer laboratory once described the most severe cases as a cat and mouse game where the surgeons “chased” the cancerous cells from one site to another.

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Image: Hypnotic Seance, Richard Bergh (1887). Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Looks like it’s time to break out the dangling watch — a new article in the The Journal of the National Cancer Institute reports this week that women who participated in a brief hypnosis session prior to breast cancer surgery experienced fewer reported side effects such as pain, nausea, and fatigue. Also intriguing was that the surgical costs per patient were on average $772 less than for patients who did not undergo hypnosis prior to surgery.For certain types of cancers where surgery is the first line of defense like breast cancer or head and neck cancer, this mix of eastern and western medicine has the potential to make a wide impact.

As reported at the American Cancer Society website:

“Such findings argue strongly for making hypnosis part of standard care for breast cancer patients,” says lead study author Guy H. Montgomery, PhD, associate professor of Oncological Sciences at Mount Sinai.

“Breast cancer patients are going through a lot,” he explains.

“It’s a distressing and difficult period to get through. They’re worried about themselves, they’re worried about their families. So if there’s something we can do to make them feel better …we should translate this from a research protocol to actually doing something for breast cancer patients every day.”

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The prospect of surgery is never pleasant. But fortunately, breast cancer surgery today is more targeted than in years past. That leads to less scarring and quicker recovery, at the same time providing an effective treatment to lower the odds of recurrence.

Diagnostic tools are more precise and the disease is better understood. Traditional options still largely apply, but employing them is no longer automatic. Each case is unique and individually analyzed. The breast cancer patient has choices and is an active participant in the decision making process.

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