My Daily Domestic Diigolet 06/29/2009

• Treatment Is Found to Stave Off Ovarian Cancer – New York Timestags: no_tag
  • Currently, most women receive chemotherapy intravenously. They should still do so, but many should get the drugs abdominally as well. The combined treatment should be offered to every woman who meets the medical criteria for it, and doctors who cannot provide it should refer women to clinics that can, the cancer experts say, adding that patients should ask their doctors about it
• Treatment Is Found to Stave Off Ovarian Cancer – New York Timestags: no_tag
  • The disease is so deadly because it has hardly any symptoms and so is often advanced by the time it is diagnosed. It usually kills by spreading through the abdomen and attacking the intestines, kidneys and other organs. Bloating, weight gain, bowel problems and other vague abdominal symptoms may occur early on, but often they are mistakenly blamed on other ailments, especially in older women. There is no reliable means of early detection.
  • Dr. Armstrong said that extensive and meticulous surgery to remove the cancer is absolutely essential if either the abdominal treatment or standard chemotherapy is to succeed. Such surgery, known as “debulking,” is more important for this disease than for other types of cancer, because studies have shown it has more of impact on survival. It may require removing parts of the intestine, spleen and other organs. Ideally, the operation should leave behind no tumors bigger than a centimeter in diameter, or 0.39 inches. The drugs work best when they have fewer cancer cells to kill, and when the tumor masses are small enough for the medicine to penetrate.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.