To Your Health
by Ajay Singh
ucla today staff
THE SILENT KILLER
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, marked by fund-raising
walks and pink ribbons to promote the search for a cure. Come November
and Lung Cancer Awareness Month will begin — symbolized by
see-through plastic ribbons. Of the 81,200 American women diagnosed
with lung cancer last year, an estimated 69,500 died from it. Worldwide,
some 155,000 people die of lung cancer — the equivalent of
a jumbo jet crashing every day.
Lung cancer is the developed world’s most common illness,
a kind of medical Sudan. Some 20,000 more American women die yearly
of it than breast cancer and all gynecological cancers combined.
Ironically, it’s one of the least talked-about diseases because
of a widespread stigma: 75% to 80% of all lung cancer cases are
from smoking, and an additional 17% from second-hand smoke. Lung
cancer is widely, if unfairly, viewed as self-inflicted, despite
the insidious role that tobacco advertising has long played in this
disease.
Consider these disturbing trends: While the mortality rate among
men peaked around the mid-1990s, it continues to rise among women.
“Women are catching up in smoking, and that leads to catching
up in lung cancer,” said John Glaspy, an oncologist at UCLA’s
Jonsson Cancer Center. One way of looking at lung cancer is as a
form of mass murder in which tobacco is the proverbial smoking gun.
But that doesn’t explain why one in four women who get lung
cancer has never smoked. “We can’t point to a reason,
except bad luck,” Glaspy said.
Lung cancer in its early stages usually goes undetected, making
it by far the most silent killer in medical science. “We often
don’t find out until it’s too late to do anything curative,”
said Diane Prager, an adjunct associate professor of medicine who
treats cancer patients at UCLA.“Screening and education to
stop smoking could turn things.”
New molecularly targeted therapies offer some hope to patients.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year approved a drug,
Iressa, for use in patients with advanced lung cancer who didn’t
respond to other treatments. The once-a-day pill shrinks tumors
in about 10% ofterminally ill patients — 16,000 a year —
who have non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form.
For both newly diagnosed and long-suffering patients, the Ted Mann
Family Resource Center at UCLA (http://www.CancerResources.mednet.ucla.edu)
offers some exceptional services. Newly diagnosed patients and their
families can attend workshops on stress management and mind-body
approaches to coping with cancer. Women undergoing treatment for
any kind of cancer can attend a weekly support group, “Among
Friends,” and those with recurrent or widespread cancer can
learn how to optimize emotional, physical and spiritual well being
through meditation.
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