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Dancing isnt the first thing that comes to mind when people think of hospitals, even less when they think of surgery. But for one breast cancer patient, a flashmob was the logical option to celebrate life before she underwent surgery for a double mastectomy. Dr. Deborah Cohan is an OBGYN at San Francisco General Hospital and associate professor at University of California San Francisco. Her CaringBridge journal asked friends and family to compile videos of themselves dancing to Beyonces Get Me Bodied flash-mob style. On Tuesday, before her double mastectomy surgery, Deborah Cohan danced with the medical team in the OR at Mt Zion Hospital in San Francisco. As her CaringPost, er, post reads:
I will be dancing in my little hospital gown and bouffant cap in the Mt. Zion operating room with the surgical and anesthesia teams. My fantasy is for you to play the song and dance wherever you happen to be (in the kitchen, the carwash, subway platform [Dan!], classroom, Labor and Delivery unit, wherever!) ideally at 7:30am but really anytime Tuesday.
Read more: This OR flashmob for breast cancer patient and doctor will melt your heart
Looks like she hadn't gotten pre-ops meds yet.
Not with THAT energy level.
The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation’s Award for Special Achievement will go to Dr. Mary-Claire King, who correlated mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes with breast and ovarian cancer. Current guidelines discourage testing, but King says it would cost little and identify 250,000 to 400,000 American women with the cancer-causing genetic mutations. The Lasker awards each include a $250,000 honorarium and are to be presented in New York September 19.
The Journal of the American Medical Association summarized King’s proposal in an article published to coincide with the Lasker award announcements. The Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research will be shared by Drs. Mahlon DeLong of Emory University in Atlanta and Alim Louis Benabid of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. They developed a surgical treatment for Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Mary-Claire King, one of this year's five winners of the so-called ‘American Nobels’ in medicine, says every woman over the age of 30 needs to be tested for cancer-causing genetic mutations.
In work that began in the late 1960s, DeLong traced Parkinson symptoms to over-activity in a specific part of the brain. Benabid, independently following up on that research, showed in 1995 that stimulating this area with a surgically implanted electrode could ease some Parkinson symptoms. The Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research will be shared by Peter Walter of the University of California, San Francisco, and Kazutoshi Mori of Japan's Kyoto University.
They made key discoveries about how cells detect and manage their proteins that have not been folded correctly, which can make them harmful. The research has shed light on certain inherited diseases, including cystic fibrosis, the Foundation said. Since 1942, when the Lasker awards began, 86 laureates also have won Nobel Prizes. The Lasker Foundation was established in 1942. Albert Lasker was an advertising executive who died in 1952. His wife Mary was a longtime champion of medical research before her death in 1994.
American Nobel Screen Women for Cancer-Causing Genetic Mutations
They said the "surprise" findings, reported at the European Breast Cancer Conference, could mean some women no longer need chemotherapy. The drugs, tested on 257 women, target a specific weakness found in one-in-ten breast cancers. Experts said the findings were a "stepping stone" to tailored cancer care. The doctors leading the trial had not expected or even intended to achieve such striking results. They were investigating how drugs changed cancers in the short window between a tumour being diagnosed and the operation to remove it.
But by the time surgeons came to operate, there was no sign of cancer in some patients. Prof Judith Bliss, from the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said the impact was "dramatic". She told the BBC News website: "We were particularly surprised by these findings as this was a short-term trial. "It became apparent some had a complete response. It's absolutely intriguing, it is so fast." The drugs were lapatinib and trastuzumab, which is more widely known as Herceptin. They both target HER2 - a protein that fuels the growth of some women's breast cancers. Herceptin works on the surface of cancerous cells while lapatinib is able to penetrate inside the cell to disable HER2.
The study, which also took place at NHS hospitals in Manchester, gave the treatment to women with tumours measuring between 1 and 3cm. In less than two weeks of treatment, the cancer disappeared entirely in 11% of cases, and in a further 17% they were smaller than 5mm. Current therapy for HER2 positive breast cancers is surgery, followed by chemotherapy and Herceptin. But Prof Bliss believes the findings could eventually mean some women do not need chemotherapy. However, that will require larger studies especially as HER2 positive cancers have a higher risk of coming back. "We would have to be very clear we're not taking a backwards step and increasing the risk of relapse," Prof Bliss added.
Baroness Delyth Morgan, the chief executive at Breast Cancer Now, said: "We hope this particularly impressive combination trial will serve as a stepping stone to an era of more personalised treatment for HER2 positive breast cancer. "Such a rapid response to treatment could soon give doctors the unprecedented ability to identify women responding so well that they would not need gruelling chemotherapy." Breast cancer is now thought of as at least ten separate diseases, each with a different cause, life expectancy and needing a different treatment.
Matching the specific errors in a tumour to targeted drugs is considered the future of cancer medicine. Breast cancers, and particularly HER2 positive tumours, are at the forefront of this revolution in treatment. Prof Arnie Purushotham, from Cancer Research UK which funded the study, said: "These results are very promising if they stand up in the long run, and could be the starting step of finding a new way to treat HER2 positive breast cancers."
Tumours shrunk 'dramatically' in 11 days - BBC News
Taking hormonal drugs for up to 15 years reduces the risk of breast cancers coming back, a landmark study suggests. The trial, involving 1,918 patients, which had top billing at the world's largest cancer conference, showed the risk was cut by a third. Experts described it as a "big deal" that will change treatment for millions of women. But they warned there were risks, including osteoporosis. Globally, 1.7 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer around the world each year.
Double dose
Around 80% of the tumours are fuelled by the female sex hormone, oestrogen. Such cancers have a low but persistent risk of returning that lasts for years. It is why women already take drugs such as tamoxifen, to prevent oestrogen getting into breast cells, or aromatase inhibitors, which stop the body making oestrogen, for years after the lump is removed. The trial, carried out on post-menopausal women, doubled aromatase inhibitor treatment from five to 10 years. The data, presented to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), showed that cancer recurrence was cut by 34%. But many women on the trial had already taken other hormonal drugs before starting on aromatase inhibitors and benefited from 15 years of treatment.
Prof Paul Goss, one of the researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, said: "[The study] will have an enormous impact, a reduction in recurrences is a very important finding. "Aromatase inhibitors are now readily available around the world and therefore our results will further improve the outcome of women with breast cancer globally." At the end of the study, 95% of women were still cancer-free if they had taken the extra medication, compared with 91% without. The study did not show an improvement in survival rates, as patients had not been followed for long enough, but scientists expect this to come as "night follows day". The results, which have also been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, have been widely praised as significant.
'Substantial number'
Dr Nick Turner, a breast cancer specialist from the Institute of Cancer Research in London, told the BBC News website: "It is a big deal, it's going to be a change of treatment for a lot women. "Extended letrozole [an aromatase inhibitor] in years 10-15 has benefit in preventing a new breast cancer diagnosis. "But this won't be for everyone, many will be low risk and can probably safely stop at five years [of aromatase inhibitors], but then we're talking about a substantial number of women keeping going from five to 10 years [of aromatase inhibitors]." There were side effects to treatment including loss of libido, hot flushes and vaginal dryness. The treatment also increased the risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures. Experts said it should be a decision between doctor and patient whether to continue.
'Compelling'
