That old 2007 calendar doesn’t work today! 

But you can get a brand-new 2008 Colondar from the Colon Club featuring young colon and rectal cancer survivors baring their scars to raise colorectal cancer awareness.

Henry Yu, Mr. May, was diagnosed with rectal cancer in 1999.  His surgery resulted in a permanent ostomy, but hasn’t held him back from becoming an active survivor and advocate.

A peer counselor for others facing cancer, he also is a member of a dragon-boat racing team Paddle Past Cancer, in addition to a variety of fundraising and colorectal cancer awareness activities.  He is particularly concerned about rising cancer rates among Asians.

In his biography, Henry writes,

My Aunt Irene passed away from cancer in early 2007. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her brave soul and deep heart. She’s my inspiration.

The Colon Club reminds people that colorectal cancer affects young people too. 

Surgery to remove colorectal cancer that has spread to the liver has excellent outcomes in some patients.  A percentage will be alive and cancer-free five years after surgery.  But predicting which patients will benefit can be difficult.

Using only two factors that could be measured before surgery, doctors have developed a simple predictive score of the probability that a patient will be alive five years after surgery.

Scoring depends on two items:

• 8 or more metastatic tumors in the liver
• presence of inflammatory response to tumor (IRT)

When tumor cells enter the liver, there may be an inflammatory response that pathologists believe contributes to the development of a new tumor or liver metastasis.  Inflammatory response to tumor in this study was defined using two markers of inflammation, either:

• elevated C-reactive protein over 10 mg/L, or
• a neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) greater than 5:1

Scoring was from 0 to 2 with

• 0 — fewer than 8 metastatic tumors and no inflammatory response
• 1 — either 8 or more mets or inflammatory response to tumor
• 2 — both 8 or more mets and inflammatory response

Surgeons kept records for almost 700 patients who had surgery to remove liver metastases from colorectal cancer from 1993 through 2006.  By measuring the number of mets and the presence or absence of inflammatory response to tumor, they found that:

• Overall five year survival for the entire group was 45 percent.
• Five year survival for patients with a score of 0 was 49 percent
• Five year survival for those with a score of 1 was 34 percent.
• No patients with a score of 2 were alive at five years.

Hassan Z. Malik MD, FRCS and colleagues concluded

The preoperative prognostic score is a simple and effective system allowing preoperative stratification.

SOURCE: Malik et al, Annals of Surgery, Volume 246, Issue 5, November 2007.