Thursday, 13 October 2016

Eradicating Health Care Disparities in the Surgical Management of Prostate Cancer

Racial disparities in prostate cancer epidemiology and survival outcomes generally have been well documented, with assorted facts and figures indicating that African-American men are disadvantaged with regard to disease control and therapeutic gains associated with this disease relative to their Caucasian-American counterparts.

Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer is a daunting disease state for all Americans: it represents the most commonly diagnosed malignancy and the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. However, for African-American men, the public health implications of this disease are all the more sobering: the disease incidence is 1.62-fold greater for African-American men than for Caucasian-American men and the mortality rate-ratio is 2.45-fold greater, respectively.

In blunt absolute terms, 1 in 3 African-American men will be at risk for developing clinically significant prostate cancer and as much as 1 in 5 African-American men >50 years of age will die of this disease.

Wednesday, 12 October 2016

Nestin: A Biomarker of Aggressive Uterine Cancers

Cancers of the uterine corpus are the most common gynecologic cancers in the United States with incidence and mortality increasing both in the United States of America and globally. Most uterine cancers have a favorable prognosis and are cured by surgery alone.

Aggressive Uterine Cancers
Identifying patients at risk of recurrence, particularly those misclassified as low risk by current clinicopathologic standards is of paramount importance. Physicians need better risk stratification tools to identify when and which adjuvant therapy will decrease recurrence. Validated biomarkers with prognostic, predictive, and/or theragnostic value will likely play a vital role in advancing assessments of risk and guiding clinical management decision making.

Nestin is a class VI intermediate filament protein that was first described as a neural stem marker and regulates the TGFβ (transforming growth factor beta) pathway. It plays a critical role in cancer cell migration, invasion, angiogenesis, and metastasis both in vitro and in vivo.

Monday, 10 October 2016

Imatinib in the Treatment of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia in Children and Adolescents is Effective and well-tolerated.

Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) is a myeloproliferative neoplasm typically diagnosed in adult population and relatively rare in children with incidence of 0.6-1.2/ million per year. CML is a clonal disorder of hematopoietic progenitor cells resulting from the balanced translocation called Philadelphia chromosome (Ph) at molecular level resulting in formation of a fusion gene BCR-ABL .

Treatment of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia
The BCR-ABL protein encoded by the fusion gene has an activity of tyrosine kinase and promotes uncontrolled proliferation of pluripotent stem cells in Bone Marrow (BM). CML has a three-phase course: Chronic phase (CML-CP), accelerated phase (CML-AP) and blast crisis phase.


CML is most commonly diagnosed in the CML-CP and only in about 10% of cases in advanced phases: CML-AP or CML-BC.Before the implementation of imatinib, hydroxyurea +/- interferon alpha remained the first line treatment of CML, followed by HSCT after achievement of hematologic remission. The identification of Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors (TKI) with BCR-ABL blocking ability revolutionized the CML therapy due to pharmacological control of leukemic clone.

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

Eradicating Health Care Disparities in the Surgical Management of Prostate Cancer

Racial disparities in prostate cancer epidemiology and survival outcomes generally have been well documented, with assorted facts and figures indicating that African-American men are disadvantaged with regard to disease control and therapeutic gains associated with this disease relative to their Caucasian-American counterparts.

Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer is a daunting disease state for all Americans it represents the most commonly diagnosed malignancy and the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. However, for African-American men, the public health implications of this disease are all the more sobering: the disease incidence is 1.62-fold greater for African-American men than for Caucasian-American men and the mortality rate-ratio is 2.45-fold greater, respectively.

In blunt absolute terms, 1 in 3 African-American men will be at risk for developing clinically significant prostate cancer and as much as 1 in 5 African-American men >50 years of age will die of this disease.

Review of Leakage from a Linear Accelerator and Its Side Effects on Cancer Patients

Cancer is becoming one of the main burdens of human being all over the world. The number of cancer patients is increasing because of the growth and aging of the population, as well as an increasing prevalence of established risk factors such as smoking, overweight, physical inactivity, and changing reproductive patterns associated with urbanization and economic development.

Side Effects on Cancer Patients
GLOBOCAN estimated about 14.1 million new cancer cases and 8.2 million deaths occurred in 2012 worldwide. From the most recent reported statistics, cancer is becoming a major public health problem in the United States and many other parts of the world.


It is currently the second leading cause of death in the United States, and is expected to surpass heart diseases as the leading cause of death in the next few years. Radiation therapy is playing an important role for effective treatment of all kinds of tumors.

Monday, 3 October 2016

The Utility and Applicability of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Scoring Systems for Predicting the Prognosis of Egyptian Patients on Imatinib

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is myeloproliferative clonal neoplasm with pluripotent hematopoietic stem cell origin. BCR-ABL fusion gene results from a balanced reciprocal translocation between BCR (Breakpoint cluster region) and ABL (Abelson) genes is the main finding in CML.

Chronic Myeloid Leukemia
Transposition of ABL proto-oncogene from chromosome 9 to BCR on chromosome 22 is either at chromosome level [Philadelphia (Ph) chromosome t(9;22)(q34;q11)] or cryptic at gene level. BCR-ABL encodes an unregulated, cytoplasm-targeted tyrosine kinase, leading to uninhibited cell proliferation.

CML is a triphasic disease, chronic-phase (CP), accelerated-phase (AP), and blast-phase (BP). Most patients are asymptomatic and diagnosed in CP; most patients will progress to rapidly fatal BP within 3–5 years if untreated.

Friday, 30 September 2016

Childhood Cancer Care in Developing Countries

Dealing with children who have cancer in developing countries is a great human experience not only for the patient and the family but also for persons who are caring them.The diagnosis of a child as a cancer case is really a great shock to all family members and it is a moment of a dramatic change in their life. First reaction is usually a combination of sadness and denial.

Childhood Cancer Care
They will start a new style of life with a plenty of investigations, appointments and different treatments decisions and plans. Different negative emotional reactions are the classic feelings of the parents every time they meet the treating physician. As caring doctors our role is not only treatment, but to help parents to overcome these initial shock stage and these negative emotions to support them to focus on what they should do to help and support their child through this hard time.

One of the hardest parts of caring for such kids is knowing what to say and how much information to give, as children might be frightened and uncertain of many things, they might be frightened of being died, and here we must assure them. Comforting them is very essential in treatment, although for us it's always heartbreaking.