10 facts about cancer by WHO

Cancer affects everyone – the young and old, the rich and poor, men, women and children – and represents a tremendous burden on patients, families and societies. Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world, particularly in developing countries.

Yet, many of these deaths can be avoided. Over 30% of cancer can be prevented by 
healthy life style or by immunization against cancer causing infections ( HBV, HPV). Others can be detected early, treated and cured. Even with late stage cancer, the suffering of patients can be relieved with good palliative care.

Fact 1
There are more than 100 types of cancers; any part of the body can be affected.



Fact 2
In 2008, 7.6 million people died of cancer - 13% of all deaths worldwide.



Fact 3
About 70% of all cancer deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.



Fact 4
Worldwide, the 5 most common types of cancer that kill men are (in order of frequency): lung, stomach, liver, colorectal and oesophagus.


Fact 5
Worldwide, the 5 most common types of cancer that kill women are (in the order of frequency): breast, lung, stomach, colorectal and cervical. In many developing countries, cervical cancer is the most common cancer.



Fact 6
Tobacco use is the single largest preventable cause of cancer in the world causing 22% of cancer deaths



Fact 7
One fifth of all cancers worldwide are caused by a chronic infection, for example human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer and hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes liver cancer.



Fact 8
Cancers of major public health relevance such as breast, cervical and colorectal cancer can be cured if detected early and treated adequately.


Fact 9
All patients in need of pain relief could be helped if current knowledge about pain control and palliative care were applied.


Fact 10
More than 30% of cancer could be prevented, mainly by not using tobacco, having a healthy diet, being physically active and moderating the use of alcohol. In developing countries up to 20% of cancer deaths could be prevented by immunization against the infection of HBV and HPV.

source by @www.who.int

4-year-old cancer patient "marries" favorite nurse in hospital ceremony

The bride wore a white dress, black leggings, a veil and carried a bouquet of pink and purple flowers. The groom wore a tuxedo T-shirt with a boutonnière, and had to get on one knee to take pictures with his bride, who is all of 4 years old.

In less than 24-hours, the Melodies Center at Albany Medical Center in New York pulled off a "wedding" ceremony for their childhood cancer patient, Abby, who had been telling her mother all week she wanted to get married to her favorite nurse, Matt Hickling. Abby has Pre-B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, according to her Facebook page.

"We are both in awe from today's visit and smiling ear to ear," she said.

The ceremony included wedding cake, donated flowers from a local florist, Enchanted Gardens, and even a special toy car reading "Just Married" that Matt pushed Abby in before returning for photos and cake.

"This day will hopefully be one our patient and her family can always look back on and smile when days are tough!" Matt wrote on Facebook. "I know I will!"

Abby's mother thanked everyone on her Facebook page, especially, Nurse Matt.

"Blessed to have all these people in our lives," she wrote.



--- source from @http://www.cbsnews.com/

Coal India to set up cancer detection centres in 5 states

Coal India Ltd will set up five cancer detection centres in the mining belts of five states, power and coal minister Piyush Goyal said today. 

                            "Coal India will set up five cancer detection centres, one each at the coal mining belts of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh, for the benefit of the people staying in remote areas and facing lot of troubles to get access to quality treatment for critical ailments like cancer," Goyal said here. 

He was in the city to inaugurate 'Premashraya', a home for cancer patients and their relatives, set up by Tata Medical Center at Rajarhat, Newtown. 

After Losing His Wife to Breast Cancer, Wisconsin Man Rents Billboards to Save Other Women's Lives

"In doubt? Listen. Please get a 2nd opinion. Start testing at age 40," reads a billboard on a main stretch of road on the northwest side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

The message doesn't come from a hospital or a non-profit organization, it comes from 79-year-old Jack Maier, who lost his wife, Myrna, to breast cancer in February 2010. 

"She was diagnosed in 1999 and had all the treatments and a mammogram done every year," Jack tells PEOPLE. "They'd always say everything was okay – like hell it was. In 2010, we found out the cancer had spread all over her body. She lived about 11 months after doctors told us it was too late."

As he mourned the loss of his beloved wife, Jack decided to turn his grief into something to help others. He used his earnings from a local lottery win to rent billboard spaces around the Milwaukee area to broadcast messages for breast cancer awareness. 

"I want to honor her memory," Jack says of his wife, whom he met on a blind date and was married to for 39 years. "She was a beautiful lady. She was an outstanding wife and mother to our two young boys. I can't say enough about her."

"Now I'm just trying to help the young ladies out there – please get a test and screening done," he adds. 

In the past year, Jack has rented three billboard spaces, each one costing $2,200 a month, according to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. 

Jack pays for the billboards with the money he won from a SuperCash jackpot win in 2006, which earned him a couple hundred thousand dollars. 

by,, http://www.people.com/article/wisconsin-man-rents-breast-cancer-billboards-after-wife-death

Implantable Devices at Risk During During Cancer Radiotherapy

Pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators most affected

Cancer patients with cardiovascular implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) who require radiotherapy may be at increased risk of a single-event upset malfunction when higher energy neutron-producing radiotherapy is used, a study now shows.

The retrospective analysis, one of the largest cohorts in which contemporary CIEDs were exposed to photon- and electron-based radiotherapy, demonstrated that more than 10 MV of neutron-producing radiotherapy resulted in a device compromise rate of 21%.

In 178 courses of non-neutron-producing radiotherapy, however, the device compromise rate was 0%, Jonathan D. Grant, MD, department of radiation oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and colleagues said in an online report in JAMA Oncology.

Single-event upsets also occurred during neutron-producing radiotherapy at a rate of 10% in pacemakers and 34% in implantable cardioverter-defibrillators per course, Grant said.

Based on these findings, the investigators recommend that non-neutron-producing radiotherapy be used whenever possible. In cases where higher radiotherapy energies are of clinical benefit, however, they emphasized that "error rates and outcomes that we report will aid clinicians in weighing the risks of using neutron-producing radiotherapy."

Grant noted the resilience of the contemporary CIEDs to radiotherapy. "The contemporary CIEDs in our series tolerated a consistent range of incident radiotherapy doses up to 5.4 Gy with no increase in malfunction risk," he said. "Given the associated expense and potential morbidity, it may be safe to decrease the number of relocations performed."

The resilience of the contemporary CIEDs to direct radiotherapy exposure is in keeping with ex vivo studies reporting malfunction thresholds of up to 150 and 30 Gy for directly incident 6- and 18-MV photons, respectively, said Grant.

Interestingly, among the neutron-producing radiotherapy group, body region was a significant predictor of malfunction, said Grant. Abdominal and/or pelvic radiotherapy was correlated with a higher risk of single-event upset when compared with sites in the head/neck and chest (hazard ratio 5.2, 95% CI 1.2-22.6; P=0.03). "The mechanism behind this finding is presently unclear and is the subject of ongoing investigation," said Grant.

CIED malfunction was characterized as single-event upset such as data loss, parameter resets, and unrecoverable resets. Delayed effects such as signal interference, pacing threshold changes, and premature battery depletion were also included.

Device malfunction was not correlated with incident CIED dose, and no delayed malfunctions were directly attributed to radiotherapy. Signal interference was uncommon and transient, said Grant.

"Basically, these events represent device compromise due to a change in the memory state of the circuitry," said Charles R. Thomas, Jr. MD, PhD, professor and chairman of the department of radiation medicine at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Ore., in an accompanying editorial. He also noted that the retrospective analysis did not involve real time or monitoring of cardiac rhythms.

"Hence," said Thomas, who is also chief of radiation oncology services at OHSU Healthcare, "there exists an opportunity to design trials that incorporate next-generation and commercially available electronic monitoring devices in this patient population ... to detect more subtle dysrhythmias, device sensor adjustments, and/or transient threshold alterations."

The study cohort included all patients with a functioning CIED who underwent radiotherapy between August 2005 and January 2014. Some 249 courses of photon- and electron-based radiotherapy were identified in 215 patients. In this group, there were 123 pacemakers (57%) and 92 implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (43%). In 71 courses (29%), substantial neutron production was generated.

Three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy was associated with a higher incidence of single-event upset than intensity-modulated radiotherapy (P=0.001), said Grant. When the cohort was limited to neutron-producing radiotherapy (P>0.99), this association disappeared, he added.

In 203 patients, external-beam photon-only therapy was used; both photon- and electron-based treatments were given in 22 plans. Ten patients were treated with GammaKnife. Therapeutic energies ranged from 6 to 16 MeV for electron-only therapies (n=14), with most of the treatments delivering 6- or 9-MeV energies.

Twenty-three patients received two separate courses of radiotherapy; four patients received three courses; and one patient received four courses. In 176 cases, dosimeter measurement was used to determine incident dose to the CIED, while treatment-planning software was used to determine this in 22 patients and reference data in 51.

Clinical symptoms developed in six patients with a CIED parameter reset, and three patients experienced hypotension and/or bradycardia. Two patients experiencedabnormal chest ticking (pacemaker syndrome) and one developed cardiac failure.

Single-event upsets in CIEDs caused by high-energy radiation were first described in 1998, noted Grant.

When high-energy photons (>10 MV) interact with material in a linear accelerator, neutrons are emitted throughout the treatment room. Thermal neutrons then interact with boron found in the metal oxide semiconductor components contained in contemporary CIEDs and disrupt electric currents.