Colorectal Cancer News in a Nutshell

Summer’s over. The black squirrels in the front yard are scurrying around hunting acorns and my inbox is full of neat nuggets of colorectal cancer news — and I don’t want to leave them buried all winter.

So here they are in brief.  You can check the links for more details.

Mixed Results Using Acupuncture for Radiation Nausea

The good news is that almost all patients felt they had less nausea after either real or sham acupuncture to manage nausea and vomiting during radiation therapy.  Nine out of ten wanted more treatments. Read the rest of this entry »

Clinical features of colon tumors can predict survival, acupressure bands reduce nausea during radiation therapy, and there was no connection between the amount of fish a person ate and risk for colorectal cancer.  Although blacks have an increased risk for colon and breast cancer, hospitals matter.  All patients — white or black — did worse in hospitals that treated a majority of black patients.

Surgical robots are being developed with a light touch that can tell the difference between normal and tumor tissue. Read the rest of this entry »

For centuries, ginger has been used for its antispasmodic, anti-nausea action and its ability to relieve nausea, vomiting, indigestion, and to calm an upset stomach. There are also reports that ginger can decrease dizziness and vertigo and some studies report that it improves the heart’s overall functioning.

Studies report that ginger can reduce blood pressure and reduce cholesterol which all help to decrease risk of coronary artery disease. One study showed that ginger is as effective as prescription drugs such as Reglan to treat nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy.

Last week there was a big write-up in the Los Angeles Times, so most of my patients cut out the article and asked me if it is okay to take ginger. Read the rest of this entry »

Adding ginger capsules to standard treatment for chemotherapy nausea reduced nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy.

Patients who got ginger (Zingiber Officinale) in capsules twice a day for three days before chemo and three days after reported significantly less nausea that those who were treated with placebo.  All patients in the study also received standard anti-nausea therapy on the day of chemo.

Almost 650 patients, mostly women, were randomly assigned to ginger supplements or a placebo in a blinded trial that will be reported at the 2009 ASCO annual meeting. Read the rest of this entry »

Patients who wore an acupressure wristband during radiation treatment had less nausea. However, it made no difference if they received a leaflet telling them that previous research showed that the bands reduced nausea or not.

The patients in the study were receiving radiation to the intestinal tract and had already experienced some nausea during treatment.  Wearing the bands reduced nausea scores by about 24 percent.

To test the theory that the reduction was caused by patient expectations or a placebo effect, half of the group who wore wristbands received a positive handout saying that research showed wristbands reduced nausea.  The other half had a neutral handout.  There was no difference between the two groups.  Both had less nausea.

Another group who didn’t have wristbands, had a very small reduction in nausea of about 5 percent.

Read the rest of this entry »