Hematology Oncology

What are the symptoms of lung cancer?

2010-10-17T00:05:00.000-07:00

Symptoms of lung cancer are varied depending upon where and how widespread the tumor is. Warning signs of lung cancer are not always present or easy to identify. A person with lung cancer may have the following kinds of symptoms:

No symptoms: In up to 25% of people who get lung cancer, the cancer is first discovered on a routine chest X-ray or CT scan as a solitary small mass sometimes called a coin lesion, since on a two-dimensional X-ray or CT scan, the round tumor looks like a coin. These patients with small, single masses often report no symptoms at the time the cancer is discovered.

Symptoms related to the cancer: The growth of the cancer and invasion of lung tissues and surrounding tissue may interfere with breathing, leading to symptoms such as cough, shortness of breath, wheezing, chest pain, and coughing up blood (hemoptysis). If the cancer has invaded nerves, for example, it may cause shoulder pain that travels down the outside of the arm (called Pancoast's syndrome) or paralysis of the vocal cords leading to hoarseness . Invasion of the esophagus may lead to difficulty swallowing (dysphagia). If a large airway is obstructed, collapse of a portion of the lung may occur and cause infections (abscesses, pneumonia) in the obstructed area.

Density of breast tissue related to ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS)

2010-10-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Among breast cancer patients who have an early, noninvasive form of the disease - called ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS - those whose breast tissue is the densest have the highest risk of facing a recurrence of their disease.
Women who previously had DCIS in one breast had three times the risk of developing cancer in the opposite breast, if their breast tissue had the greatest density among women in the study, compared with women in the study whose breast tissue was the least dense.
Women with densest breast tissue also had about one-and-a-half times the risk of developing cancer in the same breast, and two times the risk of developing invasive cancer in either breast, than women with the least dense breast tissue.
Research is based on Kaiser study on a group of 935 women whose previous DCIS had been treated with breast-conserving surgery (not a mastectomy). The density of breast tissue was assessed from mammograms.

Pomegranate juice and prostate cancer

2010-09-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

Despite the articles you may read in Reader's Digest and other magazines, there is no scientific evidence to support the efficacy of pomegranate juice in protecting against prostate cancer. Other vitamins and supplements such as Vitamin E and C, and selenium have also been studied and found to show no effect.

So what else can we do? Men, as soon as they turn forty, should go to their doctor and have a prostate-specific antigen test drawn every year. The prostate-specific antigen test is called PSA for short. Yearly monitoring of the PSA is critical to early diagnosis and cure. Since the availability of the PSA in 1990, deaths from prostate cancer have decreased by 50%.