New Hope for Irish Colon Cancer Victims
Posted on: Sunday, 20 March 2005, 09:00 CST
A NEW treatment is offering hope to the thousands of people living with killer colon cancer.
Each year the deadly disease claims more than 1,000 lives in Ireland - and men are more likely to fall victim.
But a new drug to the Irish market claims to prolong the lives of those fighting the cancer.
Surgery is the best treatment for colon cancer, but a new drug Avastin, claims to prolong the life of a patient, by cutting the blood supply to the tumour.
Irish Cancer Society Nursing Services Manager Joan Kelly said: "If the tumour has a blood supply it can grow and spread. But this treatment closes the blood vessels that feed the tumour."
Mrs Kelly revealed how we have one of the worst rates of the disease in Europe.
She said: "The colon is a long tube and most of the tumours occur in the last quarter of it.
"But then if tumours are very low down they're called rectal cancers and are treated a little differently. The latest figures we have are for 2002 and in that year there were 1,858 new cases of the disease.
"In that year, 863 men and 389 women died from the disease."
If you have concerns about cancer, contact the Irish Cancer Society helpline on 1800 200 700.
Source: Sunday Mirror; London
Related Articles
- Seventy Percent of Newly Diagnosed Alzheimer's Disease Patients Do Not Receive Treatment Within a Year of Diagnosis
- Family of Doctors Joins to Fight Lung Disease That Claimed One of Their Own
- Parents Host Golf Tournament to Fund Cure for Disease That Claimed Daughter's Life
- Oncolytics Biotech Inc. Announces U.S. Phase 2 Combination Clinical Trial for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients With K-RAS or EGFR-Activated Tumours
- Power3 Medical Products and the Princess Haya Biotechnology Center, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Collaborate in a Clinical Validation Study of the BC-SeraPro(TM) Breast Cancer Diagnostic Blood Test
- Definitive Guide to Cancer: An Integrated Approach to Prevention, Treatment & Healing By Dr. Lise Alschuler
- Analyse the Size of the World's Breast Cancer Disease and Therapy Market
- North Carolina Public Health and North Carolina's Leading Cancer Centers Join With the Colon Cancer Alliance to Present a Free Colorectal Cancer Seminar
- Family Faces Its Curse of Cancer: Radical Surgeries Aim to Stop Disease From Claiming More Lives.
 |
 |
User Comments (0)
RSS Feeds