High on the agenda at a recent seminar was the often neglected problem of weight loss in people with cancer – made worse when patients are faced with unappetising food in hospital, served at times when they don’t feel like eating.
It was a family friend who first noticed the lump in Theo’s neck, last October just before his eighth birthday. Over the following weeks his parents, Paul and Linda Gelernter, took him to various doctors and casualty clinics in the Northwood area where they lived.
Cancer in children and teenagers is very rare. It affects only one in 650, and the overall cure rate is 65%. But for those who are affected, and their parents, it is devastating.
Cancers and their treatments can permanently damage a patient’s fertility. Sometimes the treatment leads to loss of sperm production in men or early menopause in women.
Modern imaging technologies (scans) have greatly improved the diagnosis and monitoring of cancer. Several different types of scan are used to gain important information in diagnosing cancer, finding out the extent of it (staging) and monitoring how well someone is responding to their treatment.
By Joan Thomas, a specialist nurse at the Deanesly Cancer Centre, New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton Radiotherapy is often an important part of treatment for cancers of the cervix and womb. It can be life-saving, but it can also leave a women with new problems to overcome.
The great day has arrived. You are finally going home from hospital – but mixed in with the joy and excitement, there is likely to be some apprehension, if not downright fear. How will you cope? Can you do this alone? Who will help?
Strange as it may seem, most men with early prostate cancer do not need to be treated. Usually, the cancer grows so slowly that the man will live out his natural span, and die of something else before the cancer causes any symptoms.
Modern imaging technologies (scans) have greatly improved the diagnosis and monitoring of cancer. Several different types of scan are used to gain important information in diagnosing cancer, finding out the extent of it (staging) and monitoring how well someone is responding to their treatment.
Not as much as faster diagnosis and treatment, say two experts. Last year the Government introduced the rule that patients whose symptoms suggested a high risk of cancer should be seen by a specialist within two weeks of referral by their GP. The plan was to apply this rule by stages to all cancers. Its [...]
