This afternoon, First Lady Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke at George Washington University Hospital to announce the release of new guidelines that will provide free preventive health care services under the Affordable Care Act.

The new guidelines will mean that insurance plan can no longer charge copayments or other fees for a number of preventive services including colorectal cancer screenings.  The regulation does not take effect until Sept. 23, and it only applies to plans that are new after that, meaning that people who stay on their existing plan won’t benefit from the change. Read the rest of this entry »

We took a look at the Affordable Care Act through a cancer lens in order to better understand how the law will affect the colorectal cancer community.  Whether you favored or opposed enactment of the Affordable Care Act, a full understanding of the new law is essential as it will change many areas of health care.  We put together a webinar that will give you an overview of what is happening when and how it will impact you.  It gives an overview of upcoming implementation deadlines as well as opportunities for patients and advocates to get involved in the implementation process.

If you were not able to join us for the live webinar, you can access a video of the webinar or download the slides from the presentation.

Still have questions about the Affordable Care Act, and how it changes access to colorectal cancer screening and impacts the cost of cancer care?  Email us at Advocacy@FightCRC.org.

Some colon cancer patients don’t benefit from treatment with 5-FU based chemotherapy and may even have worse outcomes than if they no chemo at all.

Of every 100 people with colon cancer, about 15 will have cancers that arise when mistakes in DNA during cell division are not caught and fixed.  Scientists call this defective mismatch repair or dMMR.

More often, colon cancer occurs when mutations in chromosomes accumulate but DNA repair pathways remain intact and mismatch repair is proficient (pMMR). This is true for about 85 percent of colon cancer.

Both prognosis and the potential benefit from FU-based chemotherapy appear to be very different for these two types of colon cancer. Knowing mismatch repair status of colon tumors can help patients and their doctors make better treatment decisions.

Patients with defective mismatch repair have better disease-free and overall survival and don’t seem to benefit from 5-FU at either stage II or stage III.  Stage II patients with dMMR have significantly poorer overall survival if they get chemo after surgery.

Caution:  These results come from studies of 5-FU plus levamisole or 5-FU plus leucovorin.  They don’t include any information from the current standard treatments of FOLFOX or FLOX which contain oxaliplatin in addition to 5-FU and leucovorin.

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A growing number of foodborne illnesses are tied to salsa and guacamole dips, according to a just-reported CDC study.

The popular dips that combine chopped raw veggies and herbs have been implicated in 1 in 25 outbreaks of food poisoning since 1998.

Most of the problem has been in restaurants and delis where 84 percent of salsa or guacamole-associated (SGA) outbreaks were discovered.  Since the dips are prepared in large batches, many customers may be exposed to dangerous bacteria in them.  Lack of refrigeration is also an issue.

About a third of the outbreaks were traced to poor refrigeration, and one in five to food service staff. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2010, experts predict that 4,400 fewer Americans will be diagnosed with colon and rectal cancer than in 2009.

According to new American Cancer Society statistics for 2010, 142,570 people will hear the difficult words, “You have colorectal cancer”, down from 146,970 in 2009.

Still, 51,370 families will get painful news when loved ones die from colorectal cancer.

Continuing this year, African Americans are more likely to develop colorectal cancer than whites and other races, to die of it, and to have poorer survival at every stage of the disease. Read the rest of this entry »