One out of three Americans who needs colorectal cancer screening hasn’t gotten it.

There are 22 million men and women in the US who haven’t had a life-saving test than can prevent colorectal cancer.

But the good news is that screening rates are going up.  In 2000, half of people who should have been screened reported a current test.  Now almost two-thirds have colorectal cancer screening up-to-date

The bad news is that screening rates for the uninsured are almost half those for people with insurance.  Read the rest of this entry »

Some colorectal cancer patients whose tumors had gotten worse on all standard treatments benefited from a combination of Afinitor® (everolimus) and Avastin® (bevacizumab) during a small trial reported at the 2010 ASCO Annual meeting in Chicago.

While no tumors got smaller on the treatment, about half of patients in the Phase II trial had their cancer remain stable for six months or more.  Three patients have had stable disease for more than a year.

Seven out of ten patients in the trial had at least one serious side effect.  The most common was hypertension, but there were several bowel abscesses or fistulas and one case of bowel perforation.  There was one death due to treatment infection.

Read the rest of this entry »

Media ads for prescription drugs prompted 7.5 percent of people in a recent survey to ask their doctor about a prescription.

But the doctors only agreed about a third of the time.

They were more likely to go ahead and write a prescription when the person asking was over 65.  Almost half of seniors (46.4 percent) were given a prescription for a medicine that they saw advertised and asked their doctor about.

In the same survey, 6 out of 10 people said that ads for nutritional supplements weren’t trustworthy, but 12 percent bought the supplements based on the ads anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you a woman with cancer who wants to work but you worry that your resume needs to be tuned up or your makeup fine-tuned?

Spend an evening with Cancer and Careers starting at 6 pm on July 14th at the W Hotel in Washington and get

• Resume makeovers, interview tips and career coaching from Cancer and Careers
• Self-instruction on facial massage and makeup application techniques with Shiseido beauty experts
• Relaxation and wellness tips from SELF Magazine Read the rest of this entry »

Close to three million children in the United States live with parents who have had cancer, half a million with parents in the early stages of treatment and recovery.

One in five adults recently diagnosed with cancer reported having a child under 18 living with them.

Most were women, married, and under the age of 50. Read the rest of this entry »