Sunday, April 25th, 2010 at
6:51 pm
Can anyone, in layman’s terms explain Metastatic Carcinoma to me. I know carcinoma means cancer but i can’t get a clear definition as to what "Metastatic Carcinoma" is. Thank you in advance, 10 pts to BA.
Or if anyone has a good resource where i could find good info on it, that would be appreciated.
Metastatic carcinoma is a type of cancer that has the ability to spread throughout the body by using the blood or the lymphatic system to spread to parts of the body that are distant from the original site.In other words a skin cancer can become a lung cancer when the skin cancer metastasizes.
Sunday, April 25th, 2010 at
2:19 pm
The symptoms of ovarian cancer are often vague and subtle, making it difficult to know if there is something wrong. Know the symptoms, know your body, and know when to see a gynecologist.
Duration : 0:2:17
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Technorati Tags: joybehar, judygold, nonprofit, ocrf, ovariancancer, prevention, Research, signs, symptoms, valeriesmaldone, victorgarber
Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at
3:50 pm
My dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 Renal Cell Carcinoma. He started a treatment this week. The treatment is call Torisel. I wonder if anyone has any experience in this drug. If it worked for your loved one and if there was any side effects and how long did it take to have the side effects.
I believe this is one of the newer mTOR targeted therapy drugs. It is very new. You would probably get more response and better information by going to an online support group with other patients who are using this drug. Good luck.
Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at
10:55 am
The symptoms of breast cancer that you may identify during a self exam in this free health care video.
Expert: Dr. Susan Jewell
Bio: Dr. Susan Jewell is a trained doctor and scientist in clinical research medicine, as well as a stem cell scientist in oncology and AIDS/HIV.
Filmmaker: Susan Jewell
Duration : 0:2:32
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Technorati Tags: breast, cancer, exam, free, health, how, self, signs, symptoms, to, videos
Sunday, April 11th, 2010 at
3:52 pm
from my hand. I am worried that it will spread. I nicked my hand and the sore would not go away. Had it removed and was cancer. Anyone know much abourt this type of skin cancer?
I would not say that an invasive squamous cell carcinoma is "highly susceptible to spreading" but I will agree that the chances of this type squamous cell spreading internally are statistically higher than a SCC on the upper layers of the skin, they are more problematic to treat and they are significantly more likely to recur. Your Dr should be able to tell you whether they removed enough tissue to where he got down to where there were only normal cells present. Tell him you do not want to take any extra risks and that you would want an additional excison if he thought it might be truly helpful. He will probably give you a quick answer as to whether or not this is a good idea or not.
http://dermnetnz.org/lesions/squamous-cell-carcinoma.html
Another good idea would be to treat the area where the cancer was removed with Aldara cream. Aldara is currently only FDA approved to treat basal cell skin cancers but this will soon change to include squamous cells. Aldara is an immune modifier that brings interferons and interleukins to the site where an immune response is then activated against malignant cells. You apply the Aldara every other day to the area where the cancer was removed which then gets inflamed if there are any malignant cells present. After 6-8 weeks of treatment the inflammation dies down and the crust sloughs off and the area is cancer free. If no inflammation occurs after the first couple of weeks then you know the surgery has already removed the malignant cells and you do not need to keep treating the area.
The generic name for Aldara is imiquimod. Here is a study discussing the use in invasive SCC.
J Am Acad Dermatol. 2006 Aug;55(2):324-7. Links
Imiquimod 5% cream in the treatment of Bowen’s disease and invasive squamous cell carcinoma.Peris K, Micantonio T, Fargnoli MC, Lozzi GP, Chimenti S.
Department of Dermatology, University of L’Aquila, Italy. peris@univaq.it
BACKGROUND: Imiquimod has been successfully used for treatment of various epithelial cutaneous neoplasms. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of imiquimod 5% cream for treatment of Bowen’s disease and invasive squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in patients who were unsuitable candidates for surgery. METHOD: Five Bowen’s disease lesions and 7 invasive SCC lesions on 10 patients were treated with imiquimod once daily 5 times a week for a maximum of 16 weeks. RESULTS: After 8 to 12 weeks of treatment, 4 of 5 Bowen’s disease lesions (80%) and 5 of 7 invasive SCCs (71.4%) showed complete clinicopathologic regression. The remaining 3 lesions showed partial regression after 16 weeks of treatment. No recurrence has been detected after a follow-up period of 24 to 38 months (mean, 31 months). LIMITATIONS: The study is an open-label clinical trial on a small number of selected patients, with lack of excision with serial step sections. CONCLUSION: Topical application of imiquimod 5% cream might represent an alternative topical treatment to surgery in selected cases of Bowen’s disease and invasive SCC.
PMID: 16844522
http://www.aldara.com/
Aldara is a relatively new treatment for skin cancers and some Drs do not use it yet because of either lack of prior experience or afraid of lost income.
good luck