Importance of Body image for women (Breast Cancer Article)

admin — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 12:23:05 +0000

Body image in women with breast cancer using a scalp cooling system to reduce chemotherapy induced hair-loss

Background: Most women consider hair to be an important part of body image. Alopecia is an emotionally traumatic side effect for breast cancer patients undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy. The DigniCap Scalp Cooling System is the first scalp cooling system cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration to reduce the likelihood of chemotherapy induced alopecia.

Methods: Quality of Life (QOL) data were collected as part of a prospective clinical trial evaluating the clinical performance of scalp cooling in women with early stage BC receiving adjuvant chemotherapy.

The study’s primary endpoint was hair loss as evaluated by patient self-assessment. Treatment success was defined as ≤ 50% hair loss. QOL was evaluated by the EORTC-QLQ-BR23 (BR23) administered at baseline, last chemotherapy cycle, and one month later. For BR23, 4 response categories were collapsed to 2 categories (Not at all/A little bit and Quite a bit/Very much) for analysis. QOL was compared between those with success vs. failure of scalp cooling.

Results: 101 patients were evaluable for the primary endpoint: Success was seen in 67 (66.3%) pts. QOL at study entry was comparable between pts with scalp cooling success or failure for each item in the BR23 questionnaire. Results reported as percentages of patients in each group who answered either quite a bit or very much to body image-related questions on the BR23 questionnaire are displayed in Table 1.

Conclusions: Women with breast cancer using scalp cooling during chemotherapy who had hair preservation experienced improved quality of life, according to self-assessment of body image, compared to women who had significant hair loss.

Reference: Cancer Research Journal

How to choose a cancer specialist?

admin — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 10:01:48 +0000

Its a confusing question, specially if you are under stress or time pressure

Nuclear Medicine and Imaging: Imaging such as MRI, PET CT, CT Scan creates pictures of soft tissue parts of the body that are sometimes hard to see using other imaging tests. MRI is very good at finding and pinpointing some cancers. An MRI with contrast dye is the best way to see the brain and spinal cord tumors. Using MRI, doctors can sometimes even tell if a tumor is or isn’t cancer.

A PET CT Scan can often help with diagnosing and staging as early spread or metastasis as cancer cells containing glucose and light up and show up in a scan. This often helps with diagnosis even in cases where a tumor is not seen in an MRI or a CT scan.

Targetted therapies such as MIBG, PRRT, Alpha Therapy, Radio Iodine Therapy for Thyroid cancer come under the scope of a Nuclear Medicine Specialist.

Pathology and Hematopathology: A pathologist plays a critical role in cancer diagnosis and can confirm if the tumor is cancerous or noncancerous and if cancerous, he can confirm the type of cancer. Chemotherapy, drugs and other treatment protocols are often decided post staging and knowing the tumor type.

A Hematopathologist takes a look at the peripheral smear and the bone marrow and helps in diagnosing blood cancer.

Precision medicine means administering chemotherapy and other treatment protocols based on tumor type and knowing which drug will be able to target the mutation better.

Medical Oncologist: A medical oncologist prescribes chemotherapy, targetted therapy, immunotherapy, and other treatment protocols. He is the one to treat metastatic cancer with radiation oncologists or his own team.

Surgical Oncologist: A surgical oncologist takes care of cancer surgeries and removes the tumor or the diseased part for cancers which can be operated upon.

Within surgical oncology, there are specialists for Head and Neck cancer surgeries, GI( Gastro-intestinal) cancer specialists, Breast Cancer, Gynae-Oncology, Uro-oncologists( who take of urological cancers such as bladder cancer, prostate cancer, and kidney cancer), Ortho-onco surgeons( for bone cancers) and neurosurgeons( brain and spinal tumors)

Radiation Oncologists: Radiation oncologists are the ones to administer radiation such as IGRT, IMRT, SBRT, to cancer patients to help control localized cancers, or cancers spread to the bone, locally advanced cancers or cancers not receptive to chemotherapy

Hemato–oncologists: A hemato-oncologist takes care of liquid cancers, blood cancers such as Leukemia, Lymphomas, Multiple Myelomas. He is the one responsible for doing a bone marrow transplant, often a curative option for many blood cancers.

Reference: see more HERE

cancer treatment chemotherapy – Senator Medical AB

Importance of Body image for women (Breast Cancer Article)

Body image in women with breast cancer using a scalp cooling system to reduce chemotherapy induced hair-loss

How to choose a cancer specialist?

Its a confusing question, specially if you are under stress or time pressure