Tag Archives: count

Discrepancies in access to new cancer drugs revealed

Researchers say the results demonstrate the need for better collaboration between doctors and health authorities on an international scale, to ensure patients have access to the best treatments. Coordinated action is needed at an international level to ensure new cancer-fighting drugs are approved in a timely manner, oncologists said at the Congress. Their call came after a survey revealed that patients in some regions sometimes wait years longer than their counterparts elsewhere for new drugs to be approved. The drug approval process is important to ensure that safe and effective therapies are made available for patients, explains study senior author Dr Sunil Verma from Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Center, Toronto, Canada. …

Decision Analysis Can Help Women Make Choices about Breast Reconstruction — ScienceDaily

The special topic article by Mia K. Markey, PhD, and colleagues of The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, introduces plastic surgeons to the use of decision analysis to help women navigate decisions about breast reconstruction after mastectomy for breast cancer. “Decision analysis provides structure for methodic, thoughtful decision-making through the use of reason, logic, and mathematics,” the authors write. Decision Analysis Helps Sort Through Breast Reconstruction Options Decision analysis is defined as ” an exhaustive, iterative process that involves identifying alternatives, obtaining information about the uncertainty of outcomes, and clarifying preferences and values.” Routinely used in business, decision analysis is increasingly applied to complex medical decisions as well. …

Simple blood test could be used as tool for early cancer diagnosis

A simple blood test could identify those with hypercalcaemia, prompting doctors to investigate further. The research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, analysed the electronic records of 54,000 patients who had elevated levels of calcium and looked at how many of them went on to receive a cancer diagnosis. Dr Fergus Hamilton, who led the research from the Centre for Academic Primary Care at the University of Bristol, said: “All previous studies on hypercalcaemia and cancer had been carried out with patients who had already been diagnosed with cancer — hypercalcaemia was seen as a late effect of the cancer. “We wanted to look at the issue from a different perspective and find out if high calcium levels in blood could be used as an early indicator of cancer and therefore in the diagnosis of cancer.” Analysis of the data from 54,000 patients found that in men, even mild hypercalcaemia (2.6-2.8 mmol l−1) conferred a risk of cancer in one year of 11.5 per cent. …

Breast screening for over 70s doesn’t prompt sharp fall in advanced disease, study suggests

Their paper publishes as the Preventing Overdiagnosis conference opens next week where experts from around the world will discuss how to tackle the threat to health and the waste of money caused by unnecessary care. The conference is hosted by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford in partnership with The BMJ’s Too Much Medicine campaign. The upper age limit for the national breast cancer screening program was extended to women aged 69 to 75 in 1998 in the Netherlands, and national guidelines now recommend screening women up to the age of 75. …

Antibody research paves way for new, more effective influenza drugs

Influenza is a major global health problem. Annual epidemics of seasonal influenza cause approximately three to five million cases of severe illness, leading to between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths worldwide. In the United States, seasonal influenza epidemics are estimated to account for 3.1 million hospitalization days and an average of $10.4 billion loss in direct medical costs. “It is thus urgent to develop new drugs for fighting influenza infection, which requires an understanding of the virus’s life cycle and its interaction with the host’s immune system,” said Yotam Bar-On, a Hebrew University Ph.D. …

Overweight and obesity linked to 10 common cancers, over 12,000 cases every year in UK

UK researchers at the London School of Hygiene &Tropical Medicine and the Farr Institute of Health Informatics estimate that over 12,000 cases of these 10 cancers each year are attributable to being overweight or obese, and calculate that if average BMI in the population continues to increase, there could be over 3500 extra cancers every year as a result. “The number of people who are overweight or obese is rapidly increasing both in the UK and worldwide. It is well recognised that this is likely to cause more diabetes and cardiovascular disease. …