Sunday, February 4, 2018

NIH - How to Find a Cancer Doctor

https://apps.ama-assn.org/doctorfinder/home.jsp
National Institutes of Health
How to Find a Cancer Doctor
Cancer changes your life and the lives of those around you. Finding the right cancer doctor (called an oncologist) and treatment facility is an important step to getting the treatment and support you need.

Doctors specialize in different types of cancer and treatment methods. It’s important for you to find a doctor with experience treating your type of cancer. You also need to feel good about the doctor you choose. You’ll be working with this person closely as you make decisions about your treatment.

Your primary care doctor can suggest cancer specialists. Or, you may be able to get a recommendation from a friend or family member. Also, your local hospital should be able to provide you with a list of specialists who practice there.

You can check with your local or state medical society, which may maintain a list of doctors in each specialty of cancer care. A nearby medical school may be able to suggest cancer specialists as well.

NIH’s Finding Health Care Services webpage provides a list of several online directories to cancer specialists. Visit www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/managing-care/services to find this and other cancer resources.

American Cancer Society
Cancer Help Line 800.227.2345
Choosing a Doctor and a Hospital
When you learn you have cancer, you want to make sure you get the best possible medical care and treatment. Choosing your doctor and treatment center will be one of the most important decisions you’ll make. There are many excellent cancer care centers in the United States, but how do you know where to look?
Continue reading...

American Medical Association
DoctorFinder 
DoctorFinder provides you with basic professional information on virtually every licensed physician in the United States. This includes more than 814,000 doctors.

American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
Find a Cancer Doctor
This international medical society represents cancer specialists in clinical research and patient care. They provide an oncologist directory, which is a database of ASCO members called - Find a Cancer Doctor. The Find an Oncologist Database is made available by ASCO as an informational resource for patients and caregivers. The database includes the names of physicians and other health professionals from certain ASCO membership categories who have given their permission to be identified publicly. Inclusion in the database is not an endorsement or a warranty by ASCO of the physicians or other health professionals in the database or the care they provide.

ASCO’s patient information website -- Cancer.Net (www.cancer.net)
ASCO’s Blog - https://www.cancer.net/blog

Liver Cancer
This is Cancer.Net’s Guide to Liver Cancer.
Use the menu to choose the Overview/Introduction section to get started. Or, you can choose another section to learn more about a specific question you have. Each guide is reviewed by experts on the Cancer.Net Editorial Board, which is composed of medical, surgical, radiation, gynecologic, and pediatric oncologists, oncology nurses, physician assistants, social workers, and patient advocates.
Continue reading.....

Cancer.Net Video:
Choosing an Oncologist, with John Sweetenham, MD
Watch this patient education video to learn more about types of oncologists, sources to help find an oncologist, what to consider at your first appointment, and more with Drs. Shelby Terstriep and Jyoti Patel.



Today is World Cancer Day 
Did you know chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the most common risk factor for liver cancer?  The only way to know your status is to get tested for hepatitis B and C, take a 5 minute Hepatitis Risk Assessment developed by the CDC and get a personalized report.

Medscape - Hepatitis C
Hepatitis C
Updated: Jan 29, 2018
Free registration may be required to view article 
Author: Vinod K Dhawan, MD, FACP, FRCPC, FIDSA; Chief Editor: BS Anand, MD
Hepatitis C is an infection caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) that attacks the liver and leads to inflammation. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates about 71 million people globally have chronic hepatitis C, with approximately 399,000 dying from this infection as primarily due to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.
Continue reading........

Liver Cancer
2018: Hepatocellular carcinoma - Updated and evidence-based review
Seminar Hepatocellular carcinoma
Alejandro Forner, MD, MD Alejandro Forner
Published: 04 January 2018
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30010-2
Hepatocellular carcinoma appears frequently in patients with cirrhosis. Surveillance by biannual ultrasound is recommended for such patients because it allows diagnosis at an early stage, when effective therapies are feasible. The best candidates for resection are patients with a solitary tumour and preserved liver function. Liver transplantation benefits patients who are not good candidates for surgical resection, and the best candidates are those within Milan criteria (solitary tumour ≤5 cm or up to three nodules ≤3 cm). Image-guided ablation is the most frequently used therapeutic strategy, but its efficacy is limited by the size of the tumour and its localisation. Chemoembolisation has survival benefit in asymptomatic patients with multifocal disease without vascular invasion or extrahepatic spread. Finally, sorafenib, lenvatinib, which is non-inferior to sorafenib, and regorafenib increase survival and are the standard treatments in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. This Seminar summarises the scientific evidence that supports the current recommendations for clinical practice, and discusses the areas in which more research is needed....
Full-text article
Downloaded & shared by @HenryEChang via Twitter.
View Article: https://jumpshare.com/v/La5WS4Mn8Uwpi927nbeU

Liver Cancer And HCV
Direct-Acting Antiviral Treatment & Decrease a Incidence of Liver Cancer
November 2017
Alan Franciscus
Did you know that people who were treated with direct-acting antiviral (DAA) medications….
*Were significantly less likely to die than the people who were untreated.
*Had at least a 20% decrease in liver fibrosis after 24-weeks of the completion of DAA therapy
*Experienced a 71% reduction in liver cancer risk after being cured with a DAA medication.
The studies on this blog looked at treatment with DAAs to find out if curing hepatitis C (HCV) with DAAs improved HCV disease progression and reduced the risk of liver cancer.

Healio - December 8, 2017
Free registration may be required to view article 
Liver cancer incidence after HCV therapy linked to risk factors, not treatment
Li DK, et al. Hepatol. 2017;doi:10.1002/hep.29707.
Direct-acting antiviral treatment for hepatitis C did not correlate with an increased risk for hepatocellular carcinoma in a large cohort study of both treated and untreated patients with or without cirrhosis. Those with incident HCC after DAA treatment had higher risk factors at baseline. “There was no increased risk for HCC as a result of having received DAA therapy whatsoever,” Raymond T. Chung, PhD, director of Hepatology and Liver Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease. “The risk was related to their preexisting likelihood of developing HCC. The fact that HCC developed post-DAA, we think, is more likely to be an accident of timing than the idea that it's related to receipt of DAA — these persons were at risk for HCC whether they received DAAs or not.”
Continue reading........

In The News
World Hepatitis Alliance
Deaths from liver cancer nearly double since the 1990s, new figures reveal
Feb 1, 2018
Over the past two decades, deaths caused by liver cancer have increased by 80% , making it one of the fastest-growing causes of cancer deaths worldwide.

According to the Global Burden of Disease Study, the most comprehensive worldwide observational epidemiological study to date, 830,000 people died as a result of the disease in 2016 compared to 464,000 people in 1990. This makes liver cancer the second leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, after lung cancer.

Primary liver cancer, the most prevalent liver cancer worldwide, can be attributed to heavy drinking and other lifestyle choices but is most commonly caused by long-term infection with the hepatitis B or hepatitis C virus. These viruses are a major public health challenge, affecting over 325 million people, worldwide.

Globally, two out of three liver cancer deaths are caused by hepatitis B or C. The Western Pacific and South East Asia regions record the largest numbers of people living with the viruses and also some of the highest cases of liver cancer deaths globally. In China alone, over 260,000 liver cancer deaths caused by hepatitis B and C were recorded in 2016, accounting for a third of the global liver cancer death toll.

According to the findings, the hepatitis C virus was responsible for 160,000 liver deaths in 2016. The USA was amongst the top three countries with the highest numbers, alongside Japan and China.

The American Cancer Society suggests this is because of the high rate of hepatitis C infection among baby boomers (born between 1945 through 1965), of which prevalence is approximately 2.6%, a rate 6-fold greater than that of other adults in the USA. Highly-effective cures for hepatitis C do exist which can halt progression to liver cancer, however only 3 of the 71 million people living with the virus globally, have accessed these life-saving treatments in the last two years.

The study also found that 350,000 liver cancer deaths were caused by the hepatitis B virus, of which China and India accounted for 80% of these. The high majority of these deaths could have been prevented if people received the hepatitis B vaccination after birth. Today, only 52% of countries provide the hepatitis B birth dose vaccine to newborns.

"What many people don't realise is the correlation between the sharp increase in liver cancer deaths and the hepatitis B and C viruses", said Michael Ninburg, President of the World Hepatitis Alliance. "The rise in deaths is ultimately a result of poor vaccination coverage, lack of routine testing and inadequate access to effective treatment".

"Ahead of World Cancer Day, we are asking people go get tested for hepatitis B and C because that is a first vital step in prevention", said Raquel Peck, CEO of the World Hepatitis Alliance. "Together, we can stop cancer in its tracks".
http://www.worldhepatitisalliance.org/

The Lancet - Published: 30 January 2018
Tipping the balance in the fight against cancer – still a lot of work to do in order to bridge geographic and economic inequalities in cancer care.
Global surveillance of trends in cancer survival 2000–14 (CONCORD-3): analysis of individual records for 37 513 025 patients diagnosed with one of 18 cancers from 322 population-based registries in 71 countries

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