One of the questions I often get is if colon cancer has traveled to the liver is it then liver cancer or is it still colon cancer.

The answer is very easy. It is still colon cancer but the consequences of it being in the liver or any other organ are getting more and more important. Read the rest of this entry »

The Liver Symposium

The Liver Symposium: Embracing Excellence in the Treatment of Hepatic Tumors will be held at the Denver Marriott Tech Center on Saturday, August 22, 2009 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Directed at both health professionals and patients, the Liver Symposium is unique in combining information about liver tumors from medical experts and cancer survivors. Read the rest of this entry »

Research this week finds FDG/PET able to predict response to chemotherapy even after one treatment, and chemotherapy before surgery for liver mets makes CT scan evaluation less accurate.

Finding the best imaging methods to diagnosis and monitor cancer and comparing new colorectal cancer screening technologies to current standards are among recommended priorities for comparative effectiveness research (CER).  The FDA reports new egg safety rules and the recall of a powdered dietary supplement.

Videos of cancer patients are now online discussing the emotional impact of their diagnosis in The Day I Found Out. Read the rest of this entry »

News in Brief catches up today after celebrating the Fourth of July with swimming, sailing, and time with family.  We hope you had as good a time relaxing as we did.

Research shows that children whose parents have cancer have more social and psychological problems, mice who are fed a high-fat Western-style diet don’t benefit from exercise and develop more colon polyps, and adding irinotecan to 5FU after surgery to remove liver mets adds no benefit but has more serious side effects.

The VA is upgrading equipment to sterilize endoscopes and train staff to clean them properly with $26 million from its reserve funds.  Two scientists at MIT are sampling and freezing their own stools each day to study changing patterns of millions of  microbes in the intestinal tract. Read the rest of this entry »

Colorectal cancer patients whose cancer had spread to their livers benefited from surgery during which heated chemotherapy was pumped directly to their livers. Isolated hepatic perfusion (IHP) shrank tumors and increased survival time.  It may be a hopeful new approach to treating colorectal cancer that is widespread in the liver.

Median survival time after the treatment was a little over 17 months.  A third of patients lived two years or more.

A clinical trial of a similar hepatic perfusion technique without open surgery is currently available at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Read the rest of this entry »