This Week’s Colorectal Cancer News in Brief: March 20

This week we’re reporting on a cement that eases pain from bone mets, a successful smoking cessation program before surgery, and survival rates for diabetics with colorectal cancer.

Baylor College of Medicine is making it easier for people to schedule colonoscopies, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical School is testing a vaccine to prevent colon cancer.

During Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month there are many community screening programs being promoted, including some with free colonoscopies.  If you’ve waited . . . now’s the time to schedule that screening and protect yourself from colorectal cancer.  Screening prevents colorectal cancer as well as finding it early when it can be most easily cured.

Brief Research Reports

• Injecting a cement through the skin into bones weakened by cancer (osteoplasty) reduces pain and lets patients resume daily activities.  Eight out of ten were able to stop narcotic drugs, and half needed no pain medicine at all.  Pain scores were reduced from an average of 8.8 on an 11 point scale to 1.8.  Italian radiologist Giovanni C. Anselmetti, MD, reported results at the Society for Interventional Radiology Meeting in San Diego.
• About a third of patients who took part in an intense program to help them stop smoking before surgery were still smoke free a year later.  One out of five had some complication during surgery compared to two out of five people in a control group who weren’t part of the program.  Although patients with lower nicotine dependence scores were more likely to quit and stay smoke free, the median time program participants had been smoking was 35 years.  Heavier patients were more successful, as were those who worked, but education, living with a smoker, or being married made no difference over the long term.  Because smokers are more vulnerable to surgical complications, including wound healing and heart and lung problems, quitting before surgery is important.  Dr. Sadr Asodi reports the research in Anesthesia. Further details about the study appear in Science Daily, March 17.
• While diabetic patients with colorectal cancer are more likely to die in the five years after their diagnosis, they are no more likely to die of cancer than patients without diabetes.  However, they are older and have more cardiovascular disease that leads to more overall deaths.  Among patients treated for stage I-III colorectal cancer in a Norway center, there was no significant difference in the percentage who died of their cancer, while, overall, 46 percent of diabetic patients and 65 percent of non-diabetic patients were alive five years later. Eivind Jullumstro reports in Acta Oncologica, April 2009.
  

Other Headlines

• Baylor College of Medicine in Houston offers a unique “open access” program for screening colonoscopies that lets patients come into the Baylor Clinic and have a screening colonoscopy within 48 hours.  Patients need a referral from their primary care doctors.  Call 713-798-0950. More information about the program.
• The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is testing a new colorectal cancer vaccine.  The vaccine is designed to get the immune system to recognize a protein, MUC1, found in abnormally high amounts in colon polyps and destroy the cells that contain it.  Patients in the testing program already have had polyps removed.  Individuals from 40 to 60 with a history of colon polyps can learn more about the clinical trial by calling 412-648-9116. Story by Allison Hendricks in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.