medicalcondition:prostate cancer

How to Win the War on Cancer - YouTube
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_C26gt1LbA

How effective is chemotherapy for colon, lung, breast, and prostate cancer?

▻https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-to-win-the-war-on-cancer

If you look at the contribution of cancer-killing chemo to five-year survival in cancer patients, it’s on the order of only about 2%. Now, there’s some pediatric cancers we’ve gotten good at treating, and testicular cancer and Hodgkin’s disease are exceptions, but if you look at our most common cancers—colon, lung, breast, and prostate—the success rate is only about 1%. Meaning like, out of nearly 14,000 colon cancer patients, only 146 lived out five years thanks to chemotherapy. So, the chance of survival benefit is like one in a hundred, but doctors don’t tell patients that. “…[N]ew chemotherapy drug[s are] promoted as…major breakthrough[s], only to be later [quietly] rejected.” “The minimal impact on survival in the more common cancers conflicts with the perceptions of many patients who feel they are receiving a treatment that will significantly enhance their chances of cure.”

#cancer #chimiothérapie #prévention #nutritionfacts

As a doctor, I can see that denying #NHS care to immigrants is inhumane

The government’s charging regime risks costing the lives of thousands of people who can’t pay, such as Albert Thompson, who moved here 44 years ago.

Last week, the Guardian reported on the case of Albert Thompson, a man who came to London 44 years ago from Jamaica, at a time when many people from Commonwealth countries were migrating to the UK. This includes, of course, the thousands of nurses from Jamaica recruited in response to the NHS staffing crisis of the 1950s and 60s. Thompson’s mother was in fact one of these nurses.

In November 2017, Thompson, suffering from prostate cancer, was told he could not continue to receive treatment unless he paid a staggering £54,000 upfront. Unable to pay, he was denied further care. This comes within the first month of the introduction of upfront payments, one facet of the government’s policy of charging for NHS services provided to people who aren’t “ordinarily resident” – in practice, charges for immigrants. The charging policy was first introduced under Gordon Brown in 2009, and extended in 2014 as part of a series of Conservative-led hostile environment measures. This is why Docs Not Cops – the campaign group I am part of – was set up: to campaign for free healthcare for everyone, whatever their immigration status.

▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/12/doctor-nhs-care-government-albert-thompson
#accès_aux_soins #santé #frontières #frontières_mobiles #migrations #sans-papiers #UK #Angleterre #inégalité #pauvreté #pauvres #Albert_Thompson #la_frontière_est_partout (du coup : #monde-frontière —> concept de #Paolo_Cuttitta que je devrais utiliser plus souvent comme tag ici)

Mahmoud Abbas’ health deteriorates, and Israel prepares for bloody succession fight -

Head of West Bank’s Palestinian Authority was hospitalized for tests in U.S. at end of February

▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-health-of-palestinian-leader-mahmoud-abbas-82-deteriorates-in-rece

Amos Harel Mar 07, 2018

❝In recent months there has been a deterioration in the health of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who will be 83 at the end of the month. Information about his health has been submitted to Israeli political and security officials.
Although the security cooperation between Israel and the PA continues to be managed well, Israel is readying itself for the possibility that a continued worsening of Abbas’ health will intensify the succession wars in the PA and undermine the relative stability that now prevails in the West Bank.
At the end of last month, while he was in the United States to address the UN General Assembly in New York, Abbas was hospitalized for a few hours for tests in a Baltimore hospital. He also underwent tests in a Ramallah hospital last July. In both instances, the PA spokesman issued denials regarding illnesses Abbas supposedly had and insisted that his medical condition was satisfactory. Abbas himself, in an interview with Palestinian television on February 22, said he was in good health.
However, Palestinian activists opposed to Abbas’ regime claim that he’s ill and getting worse. There was even a claim on social media that he was suffering from cancer of the digestive system. This claim was never confirmed.
Some 20 years ago Abbas was operated on for prostate cancer, and the surgery was said to be successful.

The PA president has cut down his work hours over the past year. People around him say he seems to be getting more short-tempered and argumentative with his aides and other senior PA officials. Aside from his health and advancing age, Abbas’ behavior seems to indicate that the PA, and his leadership, are facing a crisis.

The main reason is the bad relationship with the Trump administration and the United States clearly positioning itself on Israel’s side with regard to its diplomatic dispute with the Palestinians. This American position is accompanied by other moves that are liable to undermine the Palestinian economy, like pushing the Taylor Force law through Congress (which limits American aid to the PA because of its financial support for imprisoned terrorists and their families) and the plan to reduce support for UNRWA, the United Nations’ refugee agency.
At Abbas’ orders, the PA security agencies are continuing to closely coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service, and they are regularly assisting in the rescue of Israelis who stray into Area A, which is under PA control. In closed forums with foreign diplomats, senior PA officials admit that the IDF is showing restraint in the West Bank and its approach is preventing violent flare-ups.
But as Abbas’ health gets worse, the battle among the many contenders hoping to succeed him will intensify. There are nearly 10 Palestinian politicians and security officials who see themselves worthy of the job, and there could be temporary alliances formed between some of them in an effort to win the leadership of PA. Israel is concerned about the instability that could ensue the closer the end of Abbas’ tenure seems – and is concerned that the internal tension will impact the degree to which the PA security services will work to prevent attacks on the IDF and Israeli civilians in the West Bank.

Cancer de la prostate : le suivi fait aussi bien que la chirurgie
▻http://www.pourquoidocteur.fr/Articles/Question-d-actu/17558-Cancer-de-la-prostate-le-suivi-fait-aussi-bien-que-la-chirurgi

L’ablation de la prostate n’est pas toujours justifiée lorsqu’un cancer est détecté. L’approche à adopter est régulièrement discutée. Une étude parue en deux volets dans le New England Journal of Medicine pourrait bien trancher ce débat pour de bon. Réalisée par l’université d’Oxford (Royaume-Uni), elle montre qu’entre la chirurgie, la radiothérapie et une surveillance active, aucune différence n’émerge sur la survie. Pourtant, les travaux ont été réalisés pendant une décennie, auprès de 82 429 hommes de 50 à 69 ans.

Australia and NZ work on smart way to improve management of prostate cancer | afr.com
▻http://www.afr.com/lifestyle/health/mens-health/smart-way-to-improve-management-of-prostate-cancer-20160620-gpnqc5

A bold and ambitious system, designed to ensure men receive optimum treatment for prostate cancer, has just been launched in Australia and New Zealand.

It involves creating an all-encompassing database that combines the objective metrics of men’s cancer with subjective accounts of their experiences with the management of their disease.

Countries commonly have cancer registries which record when a cancer is diagnosed and when the patient dies. What happens “in between” is largely unknown.

This new database will record what happens “in between”, often in men’s own words. It will combine quantity and quality to capture trends and variations in treatment across both countries.
[…]
Unrelated to this, in the early 2000s, Millar and Professor Mark Frydenberg, now president of the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand, put their heads together to try and determine the patterns of treatment across Victoria.

They looked at all men treated for prostate cancer in one year and saw inexplicable variations in survival.

Why, for example, were men diagnosed in Gippsland twice as likely to die of their disease than their peers in Southern Melbourne? The metrics didn’t explain the difference, nor did they cover side effects the men suffered.

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases: Diseases Neglected by the Media in Espírito Santo, Brazil in 2011–2012
▻http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0004662

Abstract

Background
The aims of the present study were to identify and analyse the Diseases Neglected by the Media (DNMs) via a comparison between the most important health issues to the population of Espírito Santo, Brazil, from the epidemiological perspective (health value) and their effective coverage by the print media, and to analyse the DNMs considering the perspective of key journalists involved in the dissemination of health topics in the state media.

Methodology
Morbidity and mortality data were collected from official documents and from Health Information Systems. In parallel, the diseases reported in the two major newspapers of Espírito Santo in 2011–2012 were identified from 10,771 news articles. Concomitantly, eight interviews were conducted with reporters from the two newspapers to understand the journalists’ reasons for the coverage or neglect of certain health/disease topics.

Principal Findings
Quantitatively, the DNMs identified diseases associated with poverty, including tuberculosis, leprosy, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, and trachoma. Apart from these, diseases with outbreaks in the period evaluated, including whooping cough and meningitis, some cancers, respiratory diseases, ischaemic heart disease, and stroke, were also seldom addressed by the media. In contrast, dengue fever, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), diabetes, breast cancer, prostate cancer, tracheal cancer, and bronchial and lung cancers were broadly covered in the period analysed, corroborating the tradition of media disclosure of these diseases. Qualitatively, the DNMs included rare diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), leishmaniasis, Down syndrome, and verminoses. The reasons for the neglect of these topics by the media included the political and economic interests of the newspapers, their editorial line, and the organizational routine of the newsrooms.

Conclusions
Media visibility acts as a strategy for legitimising priorities and contextualizing various realities. Therefore, we propose that the health problems identified should enter the public agenda and begin to be recognized as legitimate demands.

Prostate surgery edges slightly ahead of ’watchful waiting’ in study - CNN.com
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/05/health/prostate-surgery-study

When it comes to prostate cancer, aggressive surgery saves lives and leads to a better quality of life, according to a new study that could inflame the debate over how best to treat the disease — and in some cases, whether to treat it at all.
The paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is an update on a study that was launched in Sweden, Finland and Iceland a quarter-century ago. Nearly 700 men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer were split into two groups: half had their prostate gland fully removed — a radical prostatectomy — and half were followed through a protocol of “watchful waiting,” where doctors only treated them if symptoms progressed.
On average, men who underwent immediate surgery lived longer, were less likely to see the cancer spread and had fewer complications from the disease. The longevity benefit was greatest for men in their 50s and early 60s, where over an 18-year period, surgery cut the death rate by more than a third.

Le papier d’origine #paywall
Radical Prostatectomy or Watchful Waiting in Early Prostate Cancer — NEJM
▻http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1311593

RESULTS
During 23.2 years of follow-up, 200 of 347 men in the surgery group and 247 of the 348 men in the watchful-waiting group died. Of the deaths, 63 in the surgery group and 99 in the watchful-waiting group were due to prostate cancer; the relative risk was 0.56 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.41 to 0.77; P=0.001), and the absolute difference was 11.0 percentage points (95% CI, 4.5 to 17.5). The number needed to treat to prevent one death was 8. One man died after surgery in the radical-prostatectomy group. Androgen-deprivation therapy was used in fewer patients who underwent prostatectomy (a difference of 25.0 percentage points; 95% CI, 17.7 to 32.3). The benefit of surgery with respect to death from prostate cancer was largest in men younger than 65 years of age (relative risk, 0.45) and in those with intermediate-risk prostate cancer (relative risk, 0.38). However, radical prostatectomy was associated with a reduced risk of metastases among older men (relative risk, 0.68; P=0.04).
CONCLUSIONS
Extended follow-up confirmed a substantial reduction in mortality after radical prostatectomy; the number needed to treat to prevent one death continued to decrease when the treatment was modified according to age at diagnosis and tumor risk. A large proportion of long-term survivors in the watchful-waiting group have not required any palliative treatment.

La suite de l’article de CNN rend la lecture plus confuse, car il donne la parole à des spécialistes non signataires de l’étude qui donnent leurs points de vue. Essentiellement,

Carroll agrees that mortality is only part of the picture and says the new study underscores a need to better differentiate between high- and low-risk cancers.

Yapuka…

Routine #PSA #prostate #cancer test not recommended - Health - CBC News
►http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/10/07/prostate-cancer-psa.html

No major medical group recommends routine PSA blood tests to check men for prostate cancer, and now a U.S. government panel is saying they do more harm than good and healthy men should no longer receive the tests as part of routine cancer screening.

#prévention (ou pas !)