Oncology / Cancer Articles & Stories

I have been using the DaVinci robotic system for the last 5 years. The use of robotic systems in surgery has greatly improved our patient's recovery, both in speed to recovery and reduction of pain.

Previously, most abdominal surgeries required open incisions in the abdominal wall. Such surgical procedures required weeks of recovery and greatly increased the risks of potential complications. Procedures that required the removal of delicate tissues, such as surgical treatment for prostate cancer, were often imprecise in the amount of tissue removed. ( Read more about Expert Commentary: David L. Zumerchik, M.D. - 7/2/2009)

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An approach to treating cancer known as monoclonal antibody therapy, that has already effectively proven itself, is on the threshold of becoming yet more powerful, according to an overview of recent research.
   
“We believe that antibody therapy has the capacity to immunize people against cancer,” said Louis Weiner, director of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center. “Treatment modifications might be able to prolong, amplify and shape a continuous immune response to cancer cells.”

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Monoclonal Antibody Therapy? A breakthrough approach to the treatment of cancer. Using the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. The great benefit is that if and when it works there should be few side effects. After all, we are utilizing our bodies’ own natural defense mechanisms to attack the cancer cells.

So is the concept new? Well, the idea has been around for a long time. Much of the current research that is coming to fruition had its inception many years prior. At the time, it created controversy, unrealistic expectations and missed opportunities. Though, even in the early 1970s, the very idea that we might be able to destroy cancer cells by using the body’s own immune system (immunotherapy) was dismissed as “quack” medicine by many mainstream doctors.

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A common omega-3 fatty acid found in fish oil causes cancerous tissue to shrivel while augmenting the benefits of the anti-cancer drug cisplatin and reducing its harmful side effects, a recent study revealed.
   
The study, carried out by a research team led by A.M. El-Mowafy, of Mansoura University, in Egypt, was published in BioMed Central’s open-access journal Cell Division. The experiments, which were performed on solid tumors in rats, lend one more element of support to evidence showing the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids.

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Blacks’ higher mortality from cancer is due, for most types of the disease, to developing malignancies more frequently than whites – not mainly to discovery of the illness at a later, deadlier stage or having poorer survival rates after diagnosis (both of which are also the case), a recent study showed.
   
The study on the racial gap in cancer in the United States, by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

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I am the President of the Board of the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force (www.chicagobreastcancer.org) , a not for profit group that has at its mission the elimination of the racial disparity in breast cancer mortality in the Chicago area. I am also the Chief Medical Officer at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.   Our task force put out a report in 2007 which showed that black women in Chicago had a mortality rate of breast cancer which was significantly higher than white women, and that this gap had grown since 1980 when the death rates were equivalent.

By 2005 black women were over two times more likely to die of breast cancer than white women in Chicago. Much of this we attribute to 3 major interconnected problems. While the black breast cancer mortality rate has not budged in over 20 years, white women, on the other hand have experienced about a 50% reduction in the breast cancer mortality rate during the same period.

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Americans who consume large amounts of red and processed meats face a greater likelihood of death by cancer or heart disease, a recent study found.
   
The research was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, and is the largest study of its kind, with over a half-million subjects.

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Here is another story on the dangers associated with eating red meat. The research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine said that for men who eat only the equivalent of a ¼ hamburger a day had a 22 percent higher chance of dying of cancer and a 27 percent greater chance of dying of heart disease. The women who ate the most red meat were 20 percent more likely to die of cancer and 50 per cent more likely from heart disease.

Finally, we have to admit that statistics are compelling. For the vast majority of us who grew up eating red-meat, carnal abstinence can be challenging. Over the years I think I have been reasonably successful a switching off the red meat -- with the occasional glorious fall from grace. (Those infamous BBQ spareribs at Saigon Grill is definitely one of the last great hurdles to a vegan lifestyle.) But for the most part, I do stay away from red meat.

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A genetically governed cellular pathway controls whether malignant tumors respond to reduced eating by, as is usual, shrinking in size, according to recent research.
The study, published in the journal Nature, was done by scientists at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., using human cancer cell lines in mice.

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Recent innovations in breast cancer surgery that allow doctors to minimize postsurgical breast deformities may be stressing cosmetic outcomes to the detriment of actual rates of cure, a senior physician warned recently.
   
“We must ensure that surgical approaches designed to improve cosmetic outcomes do not increase local failure and the risk of subsequent death from breast cancer,” said Monica Morrow, chief of the Breast Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Her editorial was published on the British Medical Journal website.

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