Word: colon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Most doctors classify colorectal cancers according to a scale developed by an English pathologist named Cuthbert Dukes in the 1930s. The Dukes scale uses the letter A to describe a malignant tumor that is confined to the colon's inner lining, B to characterize one that has spread beyond the inner lining but has not reached the lymph nodes, and C for one that has pierced the outer wall or begun to spread to the lymph nodes. Doctors also use these classifications to estimate patients' chances of survival. Patients with Dukes A tumors have a 90% chance of surviving five...
...also encouraging, he said, that physicians had found no evidence that the President's cancer had spread beyond the section of the bowel removed during surgery. It was particularly significant that no malignant cells were found in the 15 lymph nodes in the excised section of the colon. These bean-shape structures act to screen the lymph, a watery fluid drained from between the body's cells, for bacteria and abnormal cellular matter. The absence of cancer cells in the nodes suggests that any cells that may have been shed from Reagan's tumor had not reached the bloodstream...
Reagan's doctors acknowledged that some cancer cells may have spread from the President's colon and could seed new tumors. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to prevent them from seeding. Radiotherapy, or X-ray treatment, which sometimes works well to prevent recurrences of breast or lung cancers, has not generally proved effective against recurring cancers of the colon. And chemotherapy, or drug treatment, which works well against leukemia and cancers of the lymphatic system, will not help. "Currently available information is that chemotherapy does not improve survival" for colorectal cancer patients, Rosenberg said...
This means that all the President's doctors can do is watch their patient carefully and hope to catch any recurrence in its earliest stages. Doctors have recommended that six months after the President's discharge from the hospital he should undergo another colonoscopy, a visual examination of the colon (see diagram). They will check his blood regularly for carcinoembryonic antigen, a chemical marker that may indicate the presence of cancer cells, and examine his lungs, liver and other organs by means of X rays and CAT scans...
...bowel in 1984. They feel certain that the cancerous polyp, then at a less advanced stage, would have been detected at that time. "I don't understand why they didn't do a colonoscopy right then and there," says Dr. Donald Ritt, the San Diego gastro-enterologist who performed colon surgery on the President's brother Neil...