Fight Colorectal Cancer

Last night the Senate approved an amendment offered by Senators Harkin and Specter which raised the level of funding ($3.5 billion) already provided to the NIH in the stimulus package by $6.5 billion. Under this amendment, the NIH would receive $10 billion for research, including more than $1.3 billion for NCI. Read the rest of this entry »

Acne has become a major problem for patients with colon cancer since the introduction of Erbitux and Vectibix. These drugs target EGFR not only in the tumor but the basal layers of the skin and cause a skin acne rash which can cover significant part of the head, chest, and back.

Most physician prescribe topical or oral antibiotics particular when there are a lot of pus-filled pustules. Bristol Myers Squibb which distributes Erbitux® (cetuximab) has developed a skin care kit, including liquid bandages and lotion to treat the skin. Most of my patients love it.

Patients always ask what else they can do, so I searched for remedies against acne and found interesting, promising ways to treat acne. Read the rest of this entry »

Former Senator Tom Daschle

Former Senator Tom Daschle, President Obama’s pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services, formally withdrew his name from consideration today. Read the rest of this entry »

While some surgical studies are now reporting five-year survival after surgery to remove colorectal cancer tumors that have spread to the liver of 40 to 60 percent, a review of more general national experience for patients enrolled in Medicare  in the United States found lower survival rates.

Among Medicare-enrolled colorectal cancer patients 65 and over who had liver resection, only 26 percent (1 in 4) were alive five years later. Read the rest of this entry »

Update from the 2009 Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium

African Americans in both a large national database of colorectal cancer patients and in records of a Philadelphia hospital were more likely to be diagnosed at an advanced stage and have poorer survival at every stage than white patients.

Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadephia studied information from nearly 245,000 colon and rectal cancer patients from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. They compared that information to 20 years worth of data in the Jefferson University Hospital tumor registry for 2,500 patients treated from 1988 through 2007. Read the rest of this entry »