A group of some of the world’s top doctors and scientists working in cardiology and preventive medicine have issued a call to action to tackle the global problem of deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as heart problems, diabetes and cancer, through healthy lifestyle initiatives. They say that identifying the enormous burden caused by NCDs […]
Category: Cancer
Non-invasive prenatal foetal testing can detect early stage cancer in mothers
Glasgow, United Kingdom: Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for chromosomal foetal disorders is used increasingly to test for conditions such as Down’s syndrome. NIPT examines DNA from the foetus in the mother’s blood, and therefore does not carry the risk of miscarriage involved in invasive testing methods. Now, for the first time, researchers have found another […]
World first: researchers quantify the proportion of different genetic mutations contained within individual bowel cancers
Bowel cancer is often driven by mutations in one of several different genes, and a patient can have a cancer with a different genetic make-up to another patient’s cancer. Identifying the molecular alterations involved in each patient’s cancer enables doctors to choose drugs that best target specific alterations. However, it is also becoming clear that […]
New proton therapy technique brings hope of more effective treatment for tumours without causing collateral damage
Barcelona, Spain: Radiotherapy using protons can deliver more accurate treatment to a tumour while reducing the dose to surrounding tissue. However, in mobile organs such as the lung, precise targeting of the dose is difficult. Now researchers have succeeded in making a model of breathing movement that allows for the precise measurement of narrow beams […]
Prostate cancer patients who receive permanent radiotherapy implants twice as likely to be free of cancer after five years
Barcelona, Spain: Results from a randomised controlled trial to compare the use of permanent radioactive implants (brachytherapy) with dose-escalated external beam radiotherapy in patients with prostate cancer show that the men who received brachytherapy were twice as likely to be cancer-free five years later. Presenting these results at the 3rd ESTRO Forum in Barcelona, Spain, […]
High radiotherapy dose improves prospects for children with brain cancer
Barcelona, Spain: Two studies presented on Sunday at the 3rd ESTRO Forum in Barcelona, Spain, show that increasing the dose of radiotherapy given to children with an intracranial ependymoma, a form of cancer of the central nervous system, can significantly improve their survival. Malignant ependymoma, which develops in the cells that line the hollow cavities […]
Brachytherapy improves survival for inoperable early stage endometrial cancer
Barcelona, Spain: Women who have early stage endometrial cancer and are inoperable tend to live longer if they have been treated with brachytherapy with or without external beam radiation, according to new research presented at the 3rd ESTRO Forum in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday. Brachytherapy is a type of internal radiotherapy that involves putting a […]
Combined brachytherapy techniques should be “benchmark” for cervical cancer treatment
Barcelona, Spain: The first large international study to investigate the late side-effects of a combination of two forms of brachytherapy to treat cervical cancer has shown that the technique successfully delivers higher radiation doses to the tumour without an increase in treatment-related problems afterwards. Brachytherapy is a type of internal radiotherapy that involves putting a […]
New radiotracer helps avoid neck dissection in patients with early head and neck cancer
Nice, France: The discovery that the identification and biopsy of the first lymph node to which a cancer spreads (the sentinel node) can lead to more accurate diagnosis and treatment has revolutionised the management of breast cancer. Now a team of researchers has been able to identify accurately the sentinel node (SN) in head and […]
New research shows possibility of cure for HPV positive throat cancer patients with limited distant metastasis
Nice, France: Patients with cancer of the throat caused by the Human Papilloma virus (HPV+) have a better prognosis than those who are negative for the virus (HPV-). Now, for the first time, researchers have shown with convincing evidence that a group of patients with HPV+ cancer of the oropharynx (the part of the throat […]