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Skin Cancer, Aspirin Cuts Risk?

Source: Cancer (online Journal, March 11, 2013); American Cancer Society ASPIRIN  is one of the most widely used medications in the world, with an estimated 40,000 tons of it being consumed each year.  In countries where Aspirin is a registered trademark owned by Bayer, the generic term is acetylsalicylic acid (ASA). Plant extracts, including willow [...]

Childhood Cancers Increasing!

Sources: National Cancer Institute; US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) ON AVERAGE 1 to 2 out of every 10,000 children in the United States are diagnosed with some form of cancer. Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among U.S. children 1 to 14 years of age.  Over the past 20 years, [...]

Pancreatic Cancer Continues to Rise

Sources: National Cancer Institute; National Institutes for Health PANCREATIC cancer will kill 38,460 of the 45,220 people who are diagnosed with it in 2013 in the US.  Pancreatic cancer is a disease in which malignant (cancer) cells are found in the tissues of the pancreas. Also called exocrine cancer.  The pancreas makes pancreatic juices. These [...]

Liver Cancer -Latest

Sources: American Cancer Society; MD Anderson Cancer Center of the University of Texas LIVER  cancer is one of the most rapidly increasing cancers in the US, with 22,600 cases of primary liver diagnosed in the United States in 2009.  It is a killer cancer with an overall 5-year survival rate of around 15%. The Liver [...]

Hospital Acquired Infections. Super Bugs Get More…Um, Super.

Sources: NPR (National Public Radio); US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) WE'VE blogged about MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), VRE (cancomycin Resistant Enterococcus) and C-Diff (Clostridium difficile).  Get ready to add another nasty super bug to the list -CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae). Federal officials warn that the newest kid on the block has become a significant health problem [...]

Breast Cancer Still a Leading Cause of Cancer Death for Women

Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) MAJOR findings contained in the most current comprehensive report of cancer statistics, compiled in the United states reveals that Breast Cancer is still a leading killer of women.  The three most common cancers with which women continue to be diagnosed are: 1. Breast cancer (123.1 per [...]

Robotic Surgery, State of the Art comes with Complications.

 Sources:  Bloomberg News, US Food & Drug Administration THEY have been hailed as the latest state of the art technology and their manufacturer has given them a name worthy of a medical rennaissance -the Da Vinci.  But are robotic surgeries actually safer than those performed directly by the hand of a surgeon? Robot systems (da [...]

Ovarian Cancer, is Pap Test Key to Dectecting?

Sources:  Johns Hopkins Medicine (2013, January 9). ScienceDaily (2013, February 12). RESEARCHERS at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a test to detect ovarian and endometrial cancers using cervical fluid obtained in routine Pap tests. The Papanicolaou (Pap) tes is a minimally invasive screening test routinely performed during annual gynecologic visits.  Cells collected from the [...]

Childhood Cancer, Common.

Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Jemal A, et al., Cancer statistics, 2009. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 2009;59(4):225–249; U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Cancer Institute; 2009. CANCER is the second most common cause of death among children between [...]

Cancer Deaths Associated with Least Agressive Breast Cancer?

Sources: Cancer, Vol. 119, Issue 3, Page 473, 1 February 2013; Haque R., et al. Impact of breast cancer subtypes on treatment and survival. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev.. 2012; 21: 1848-1855. ALARMING results from a Kaiser Permanente (the largest HMO in the US) study, 21 years in the making, suggest that even the most common and least aggressive subtype of [...]