Sylvia Sanderson remembers when she found the lump in her breast.
It was the last week of April 2020 and COVID-19 was still spilling across America. Her three children were learning from home, and her husband s hours were cut.
While the lump was unusual, the 38-year-old Sanderson thought it might be a clogged duct, so she waited to see if it changed.
One week later, it persisted. I was freaking out, Sanderson said. I had this lump that could be a thing, so what would I do?
She was worried about leaving the house during a pandemic, but she was more concerned about her impending breast cancer diagnosis.
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11:02 COVID-19 caused a significant disruption in lung cancer screening, leading to a decrease in new patients screened and an increased proportion of suspicious nodules once screening resumed, says Robert Van Haren, MD, assistant professor of surgery at UC, a UC Health thoracic surgeon and corresponding author on the study.
Dr. Robert Van Haren joins
Cincinnati Edition to discuss the study and how it could be used to deal with operations as the pandemic continues.
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According to the American Cancer Society s estimate, over 280,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women in 2021, explains Xiaoting Zhang, PhD, professor and Thomas Boat Endowed Chair in UC s Department of Cancer Biology, director of the Breast Cancer Research Program and member of the University of Cincinnati Cancer Center, who led this research. Like many other cancers, breast cancer cells are fueled by mutations and overproduction of driver genes, which lead the process of cancer development.
He says one of these genes, called HER2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2), accounts for about 20% of all human breast cancer cases, and while there are some therapies to target it, unwanted side effects and treatment resistance often occur in patients, causing relapse.
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PORTLAND, OR - A first-of-its-kind randomized clinical trial found that patients with pancreatic cancer didn t live any longer than expected after receiving pre-operative chemotherapy from either of the two standard regimens, according to trial results published in
JAMA Oncology.
While the trial findings did not show a direct patient benefit, they do show that it s possible to safely administer chemotherapy prior to pancreatic cancer surgery. They also pave the way for better treatment testing for this notorious killer. With no symptoms in the early stages, and few effective therapies, pancreatic cancer is the fourth-most deadly cancer type in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, only 20 percent of pancreatic cancer patients are alive one year after diagnosis. After five years, only about 7 percent are alive.