In War-Torn Ukraine, a Doctor Evacuates Children with Cancer

In War-Torn Ukraine, a Doctor Evacuates Children with Cancer

Post By Science And Technology Conflict, medicine on the front lines, oncology, pediatric oncology, Pediatrics, Ukraine, War

Roman Kizyma The first months of war, we didn’t have the weekdays, so we just worked seven days, 24 hours.

There are moments when I can work for three days without sleep. There are moments like when I, I cannot do anything for this day.

I had a very long period without my very small kids. And so when I met in a couple of months, my younger son, so he didn’t recognize me. So compared to the people that suffered the atrocities in Bucha or European or Eastern Ukraine, this is nothing. But this wasn’t a good experience.

The main factor for myself is this feeling of responsibility.

[Roman Kizyma, to camera] So when you see a bald guy or girl in the hospital, that’s my patient.

If I just stop, I compromise the treatment of hundreds of children. And I think I’m not in the position to to end this.

[Roman Kizyma, in Ukrainian to patient] Where is the problem? Where does it hurt? Show me.

[Patient] Here.

Roman Kizyma Here? Ok.

[Roman Kizyma in Ukrainian, to patient] Do you want to show me your tongue? Ok.

My name is Roman Kizyma. I am pediatric oncologist, a medical doctor treating children with cancer. Now I’m the Acting Director of Western Ukrainian Specialized Children’s Medical Center, a huge, specialized hospital for severely ill children with cancer with other catastrophic diseases.

The war made the things for children with cancer and other catastrophic disease very difficult. You have to fight two wars, one against cancer, the other against the crazy Russian army shooting at you. It’s not only the physical unsafety, it’s also the complete disruption at some point of medical logistics. So no drugs coming to the hospital. No doctors or nurses available in the direct hospital. The physical unsafety, the shelling of Ukrainian electricity infrastructure.

So sometimes we were black. All the hospital was black. No electricity.

[Hospital staff, in Ukrainain] And our doctor’s don’t know this but

[Staff] — Oh everyone’s with flashlights.

[Hospital Staff singing Ukrainian National Anthem]

Roman Kizyma This is a vulnerable group of patients. And when there is a kind of crisis, vulnerable group of people suffers the most because no one cares. Everyone trying to save themselves. So that’s why a lot of families like asked or decided or went by themselves to Europe with this project that we call Safer Ukraine.

Before the war, I was just treating cancer. I transformed into someone coordinating the big groups of very sick children going here and there. So it means like one and a half thousand children out of Ukraine with cancer treated somewhere else. The team is ready to help these children and we have the capacity. So that’s why this is a special hospital.

During two years before the start of the war, we were creating the new department, the Clinic of Pediatric oncology and stem cell transplant here in this hospital.We opened this seven days before the start of the war, so we had a huge amount of patients going to be treated there. And we have to transform ourselves from oncologists to emergency doctors and relocate all our patients to to to the other countries.

So it was a huge blow for our level of work. And we have to abandon all these new structures that we created because you cannot perform transplants when you are getting shellings and shootings and all these children.

[Roman Kizyma in Ukrainian] If not urgent then tomorrow, ok? Ok. If urgent I can look now. Ok.

I feel so stressed. I feel like in a race against time. The relocation of a child with cancer from Ukraine to Western Europe is not something new. We did that even before the war, but was like a couple of children per year. But how do you do that if you have 100 children with cancer coming to your hospital per night.

These are severely ill children. And for each of them you should have a lot of medical staff to support each patient.

[Nurse, in Ukrainian] Alright.

There is no hospital that can treat 1,500 children at one time from some country. So this is not possible,

[Child, in Ukrainian] It’s cold.

Roman Kizyma That’s why we tried to use different criteria. First of all, we organized multistep approach with different hubs.

We got the requests from the families or the doctors from different cities of the east of Ukraine or Kyiv, the capital. The first hub is in Lviv. This hospital that can host any child of any severity. And if they cannot go further, we can treat them here for a long time or for a short time and then allocate them.

We created with our partners, with charities or the support for housing and the capacity for transportation. So we had a lot of volunteers meeting children in the railway station, carrying them out of there, carrying 20 patients out of a train in a railway station that is packed with people trying to go somewhere. We went only [as] five doctors to meet a huge convoy at the railway station, so we have to carry kids across the railways.

The next step was the hub in Poland. The thing was to cross the border was a lot of queues of people trying desperately to move out of Ukraine. So we used the diplomatic power of Polish consulates situated in Lviv. This was saving time for the severely ill kids because if they stayed for ten or 20 hours in the queue, they would not leave it. So it was possible.

In the next hub there was a triage of the international team that came here to Poland and they formed a logistics. A huge hotel was transformed into a medical center in the middle of Poland. Children were arriving there and they were triaged to different rooms and taken care by this group of international doctors.

Then they contacted their dedicated hospital throughout Europe and U.SA and these hospitals and their government, they were transferring these kids to a specific hospital admitted by their team. In the worst phase, we had more than 150 children per week sent by this pathway. This was very hard.

[Roman Kizyma in Ukrainian, to patient] You can pull it up a bit. Good.

Roman Kizyma My job was not to step into one into one case.

So this was I was oncologist myself. So I tried just to not to step in each case more than like 10 minutes. So I used my previous experience to triage them.

[Roman Kizyma in Ukrainian, to patient.] Good. Can you smile? Can you smile and show your teeth? Good, well done.

During all these relocations, we lost two children. It’s Russians who were attacking them, kids were from Kharkiv.

So it’s very close to the Russian border. That’s why during their very severe treatment phase, they had to be evacuated from their hospital, put into ordinary trains and they came to L’viv. Like we literally had no choice. So we had to explain to the families, you decide what you do. You don’t go and we stay and try to do something here in L’viv during these air strikes, or you risk.

But at least, you know you did everything to a child. So they risked and we failed. So this both children died. Some of their doctors who helped us here, they came from the regions that were under attack. There is a sad story of our colleagues in Kyiv. One of their doctors, she was driving to her shift for the children with cancer.

She was hit directly by a Russian rocket in her car and she was burned alive. Her name is Oksana Leontieva. And I think this event, it was very influential. So we realized how dangerous, dangerous the work is.

[In Ukrainian, singing] Hands made some porridge and gave to Darynka. Running to get some porridge, Yes.

But there were a lot of happy situations. And I visited a lot of these hospitals afterwards, like in fall in the winter, that here. And the people were happy. The children were happy. Who are you treating? Sometimes I felt like I was going through a hospital in Europe and like the first room, my patient, the second room, my patient. The third room, my patient.

So I was feeling like I’m the part of the staff of that hospital. You were asking me like, What should we do with your patients? So mostly these are the good stories and the feedbacks where like people are very grateful to all these countries because they felt like they were in home. During last year even as a pediatric oncologist, I helped to build the facilities.

So I’ll try to do that as a director, but not only for pediatric oncology, for example, this will be the intensive care unit, the huge project within this year. So some people like outside of Ukraine, how can you build during the wartime? You can. Why not? The life still goes on and we have to have these places for this severely ill children that will look better.

So that’s what I am focused now to to do that. This is a network that try to balance itself. So this is a never ending process. I hope this will work.

[The above is a transcript of this podcast]

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Labs: the (overlooked) building block of Universal Health Coverage

Post By Politics Aid and development, borders, Buildings, Cancer, Egypt, Global health, Health Care, Health professionals/workforce, Health systems, hospitals, Industry, infrastructure, Investment, medicines, oncology, patient access, patients, Policy, Prevention, Public health, Public-private partnerships, REACH, Remedies and commitments, Rights, Services, Society and culture, United States

Hepatitis C (HCV) — a potentially life-threatening virus that infects 1.5 million new people around the world every year — is highly treatable if diagnosed early.^[1]

Unfortunately, access to quality screening is far from universal. Countries like Egypt — one of the countries with the highest prevalence of HCV in the world — demonstrate the impact screening can have. In 2015, HCV was prevalent in an estimated 7 percent of the country’s population and accounted for 7.6 percent of the country’s mortality, presenting a significant health care and societal burden.^[2]

But since then, Egypt has turned a corner. In 2018, the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population launched a massive nationwide HCV screening and treatment campaign as part of its 2014-2018 HCV action plan.^[3] The campaign’s results were inspiring: by July 2020, Egypt had screened more than 60 million people^[3] and treated 4 million residents.^[2] Today, Egypt is set to be the world’s first country to eliminate HCV within its borders.^[2]

The results of Egypt’s HCV screening program speak to diagnostics’ power in contributing to improved health outcomes around the world. Among the essential components of any health system is the capacity for prevention, which includes timely screening and detection. But a preventive approach based on timely diagnosis won’t work without the right infrastructure in place.

Strong laboratories as a cornerstone of building better health care

Matt Sause, CEO Roche Diagnostics | via Roche

The World Health Organization (WHO) highlights the critical role well-functioning laboratory services play in health systems with good reason.^[4] Around the world, clinicians increasingly rely on laboratory tests for diagnostic and treatment decisions. These tests help them make more informed decisions that result in better care and potentially improved outcomes for patients.

The challenges facing labs today — and tomorrow

Two key challenges facing laboratory systems today are underfunding and insufficient resources. Despite their central importance, laboratories struggle to garner the political and financial support they need to be as effective as possible. For example, it’s estimated that while lab results drive approximately 70 percent of clinical decision making, laboratories make up only 5 percent of hospital costs.^[5]

After all, it’s the health care systems with strong, resilient labs that will be best placed to manage future pandemics and ever-growing health threats like heart disease and dementia.

What’s needed is a political commitment to provide everyone with access to accurate and timely diagnosis that paves the way to effective treatment and health. And putting this commitment into practice can only be achieved and sustained through coordinated multistakeholder efforts and public—private partnerships. This is not just a worthwhile investment for patients, but also the wider health care system in the long run. After all, it’s the health care systems with strong, resilient labs that will be best placed to manage future pandemics and ever-growing health threats like heart disease and dementia.

Another challenge is the health care workforce. Effective use of diagnostics requires qualified people to drive it, with expertise in pathology and laboratory medicine. Yet the world currently faces a laboratory staffing shortage. For diagnostics in particular, baccalaureate degree programs in laboratory science have previously been on the ‘endangered list’ of allied health professions.^[6] In the end, inadequately trained staff, frequent turnover and scheduling problems all make quality lab results more difficult to guarantee.

This UHC ambition is only possible when backed by a network of strong laboratories that help ensure individuals can access high-quality diagnostics services without financial burden in all health care systems.

And that’s not all: inadequate infrastructure and staffing shortages are more present in low-income, rural communities, which exacerbate the broader diagnostics gap troubling global health care today. Many low-income countries lack an integrated laboratory network that can fully provide high-quality, accessible and efficient laboratory testing services for the entire population. In fact, a commission convened by The Lancet concluded that 81 percent of these populations have little or no access to diagnostics.^[7]

The path to Universal Health Coverage

Put simply, innovative diagnostics are only meaningful if they reach people where and when they’re needed. Advancing this equity is at the heart of the WHO’s vision for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030. The goal? To guarantee all people have access to high-quality services for their health and the health of their families and communities, without facing financial hardship.

This UHC ambition is only possible when backed by a network of strong laboratories that help ensure individuals can access high-quality diagnostics services without financial burden in all health care systems. To do this, UHC should explicitly include diagnostics services. Financially, it’s savings from screening, early diagnosis and targeted treatment that make UHC feasible. Health care systems will have to undergo a systemic shift from focusing on treatment to focusing on prevention. And that’s just not possible when clinicians don’t have access to fast, accurate and cost-efficient lab results to inform their clinical decision-making. Policies and regulations that safeguard UHC goals of access and health equity are essential to make progress toward UHC.^[8] The Saving Access to Laboratory Services Act (SALSA), in the United States, is an example of how national policies can help to ensure sustainable laboratory networks and contribute to equitable access to essential healthcare.

Stronger labs can not only help health care systems make savings in the routine management of population health; investing in them also helps to reduce costs and prepare in advance for any future public health crises.

This year has already seen encouraging progress toward achieving UHC through enhanced diagnostics capacity. The adoption of the resolution on strengthening diagnostics capacity at the World Health Assembly in May was an important signal of growing international political support for diagnostics. It was also a call to action. The next step for this month’s United Nations General Assembly and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit is channeling political support for diagnostics into the development of an action-oriented declaration.

To put us closer to UHC, this declaration should commit to ensuring that national health plans include access to timely detection and prevention. That starts with supporting laboratory systems and establishing National Essential Diagnostics Lists that identify the most critical diagnostic tests to help diagnose patients quickly and accurately so that they can receive needed treatment. At Roche, we’re advocating that governments, industry, civil society and other policy stakeholders will come together around concrete plans and shared resources that strengthen diagnostics and the lab infrastructure that makes them effective. In line with our commitment to increase patient access to important diagnostic solutions by 2030, we plan to do our part.

^[1] Hepatitis C. World Health Organization. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hepatitis-c (Accessed 22.08.2023)

^[2] Egypt’s Ambitious Strategy to Eliminate Hepatitis C Virus: A Case Study. Hassanin, A. et al. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8087425/ (Accessed 22.08.2023)

^[3] Hepatitis C in Egypt – Past, Present, and Future. Roche Diagnostics. Available at: https://diagnostics.roche.com/global/en/article-listing/egypt-s-road-to-eliminating-hepatitis-c-virus-infection—a-stor.html (Accessed 22.08.2023)

^[4] Monitoring the Building Blocks of Health Systems. World Health Organization. Available at: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/258734/9789241564052-eng.pdf (Accessed 14.07.2023)

^[5] The Cost-effective Laboratory: Implementation of Economic Evaluation of Laboratory Testing. Bogavac-Stanojevic N. & Jelic-Ivanovic Z. J Med Biochem. Volume 36, Issue 3, 238 – 242. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6287218/

^[6] Ensuring Quality Cancer Care through the Oncology Workforce: Sustaining Care in the 21st Century: Workshop Summary. National Academy of Sciences. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK215247/ (Accessed 14.07.2023)

^[7] Essential diagnostics: mind the gap. The Lancet Global Health. Available at: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(21)00467-8/fulltext (Accessed 14.07.2023)

^[8] Private Sector Commitments To Universal Health Coverage. UHC Private Sector Constituency 2023 Statement. https://www.uhc2030.org/fileadmin/uploads/UHC2030_Private_Sector_Commitments_Statement_April2023.pdf (Accessed 29.08.2023)

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Breast density changes over time could be linked to breast cancer risk, study finds | CNN

Post By Health brand safety-nsf health issues, brand safety-nsf sensitive, breast cancer, breast cancer screening, business, business and industry sectors, Cancer, cancer screening and detection, demographic groups, diagnostic imaging, diseases and disorders, domestic alerts, domestic-business, domestic-health and science, economy and trade, electronics, females (demographic group), health and medical, Health Care, iab-business and finance, iab-cancer, iab-diseases and conditions, iab-healthcare industry, iab-industries, iab-medical health, iab-medical tests, iab-technology & computing, iab-technology industry, international alerts, international-business, international-health and science, medical and health care electronics, medical diagnostics, medical fields and specialties, oncology, population and demographics, screening and testing, society, Technology

CNN
—

Breast density is known to naturally decrease as a woman ages, and now a study suggests that the more time it takes for breast density to decline, the more likely it is that the woman could develop breast cancer.

Researchers have long known that women with dense breasts have a higher risk of breast cancer. But according to the study, published last week in the journal JAMA Oncology, the rate of breast density changes over time also appears to be associated with the risk of cancer being diagnosed in that breast.

“We know that invasive breast cancer is rarely diagnosed simultaneously in both breasts, thus it is not a surprise that we have observed a much slower decline in the breast that eventually developed breast cancer compared to the natural decline in density with age,” Shu Jiang, an associate professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and first author of the new study, wrote in an email.

Breast density refers to the amount of fibrous and glandular tissue in a person’s breasts compared with the amount of fatty tissue in the breasts – and breast density can be seen on a mammogram.

“Because women have their mammograms taken annually or biennially, the change of breast density over time is naturally available,” Jiang said in the email. “We should make full use of this dynamic information to better inform risk stratification and guide more individualized screening and prevention approaches.”

The researchers, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, analyzed health data over the course of 10 years among 947 women in the St. Louis region who completed routine mammograms. A mammogram is an X-ray picture of the breast that doctors use to look for early signs of breast cancer.

The women in the study were recruited from November 2008 to April 2012, and they had gotten mammograms through October 2020. The average age of the participants was around 57.

Among the women, there were 289 cases of breast cancer diagnosed, and the researchers found that breast density was higher at the start of the study for the women who later developed breast cancer compared with those who remained cancer-free.

The researchers also found that there was a significant decrease in breast density among all the women over the course of 10 years, regardless of whether they later developed breast cancer, but the rate of density decreasing over time was significantly slower among breasts in which cancer was later diagnosed.

“This study found that evaluating longitudinal changes in breast density from digital mammograms may offer an additional tool for assessing risk of breast cancer and subsequent risk reduction strategies,” the researchers wrote.

Not only is breast density a known risk factor for breast cancer, dense breast tissue can make mammograms more difficult to read.

“There are two issues here. First, breast density can make it more difficult to fully ‘see through’ the breast on a mammogram, like looking through a frosted glass. Thus, it can be harder to detect a breast cancer,” Dr. Hal Burstein, clinical investigator in the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who was not involved in the new study, said in an email. “Secondly, breast density is often thought to reflect the estrogen exposure or estrogen levels in women, and the greater the estrogen exposure, the greater the risk of developing breast cancer.”

In March, the US Food and Drug Administration published updates to its mammography regulations, requiring mammography facilities to notify patients about the density of their breasts.

“Breast density can have a masking effect on mammography, where it can be more difficult to find a breast cancer within an area of dense breast tissue,” Jiang wrote in her email.

“Even when you take away the issue of finding it, breast density is an independent risk factor for developing breast cancer. Although there is lots of data that tell us dense breast tissue is a risk factor, the reason for this is not clear,” she said. “It may be that development of dense tissue and cancer are related to the same biological processes or hormonal influences.”

The findings of the new study demonstrate that breast density serves as a risk factor for breast cancer – but women should be aware of their other risk factors too, said Dr. Maxine Jochelson, chief of the breast imaging service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who was not involved in the study.

“It makes sense to some extent that the longer your breast stays dense, theoretically, the more likely it is to develop cancer. And so basically, it expands on the data that dense breasts are a risk,” Jochelson said, adding that women with dense breasts should ask for supplemental imaging when they get mammograms.

But other factors that can raise the risk of breast cancer include having a family history of cancer, drinking too much alcohol, having a high-risk lesion biopsied from the breast or having a certain genetic mutation.

For instance, women should know that “density may not affect their risk so much if they have the breast cancer BRCA 1 or 2 mutation because their risk is so high that it may not make it much higher,” Jochelson said.

Some ways to reduce the risk of breast cancer include keeping a healthy weight, being physically active, drinking alcohol in moderation or not at all and, for some people, taking medications such as tamoxifen and breastfeeding your children, if possible.

“Breast density is a modest risk factor. The ‘average’ woman in the US has a 1 in 8 lifetime chance of developing breast cancer. Women with dense breasts have a slightly greater risk, about 1 in 6, or 1 in 7. So the lifetime risk goes up from 12% to 15%. That still means that most women with dense breasts will not develop breast cancer,” Burstein said in his email.

“Sometimes radiologists will recommend additional breast imaging to women with dense breast tissue on mammograms,” he added.

The US Preventive Services Task Force – a group of independent medical experts whose recommendations help guide doctors’ decisions – recommends biennial screening for women starting at age 50. The task force says that a decision to start screening earlier “should be an individual one.” Many medical groups, including the American Cancer Society and Mayo Clinic, emphasize that women have the option to start screening with a mammogram every year starting at age 40.

“It’s also very clear that breast density tends to be highest in younger women, premenopausal women, and for almost all women, it tends to go down with age. However, the risk of breast cancer goes up with age. So these two things are a little bit at odds with each other,” said Dr. Freya Schnabel, director of breast surgery at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center and professor of surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York, who was not involved in the new study.

“So if you’re a 40-year-old woman and your breasts are dense, you could think about that as just being really kind of age-appropriate,” she said. “The take-home message that’s very, very practical and pragmatic right now is that if you have dense breasts, whatever your age is, even if you’re postmenopausal – maybe even specifically, if you are postmenopausal – and your breasts are not getting less dense the way the average woman’s does, that it really is a reason to seek out adjunctive imaging in addition to just mammography, to use additional diagnostic tools, like ultrasound or maybe even MRI, if there are other risk factors.”

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New study suggests Black women should be screened earlier for breast cancer | CNN

Post By Health african americans, american cancer society, brand safety-nsf death, brand safety-nsf health issues, brand safety-nsf sensitive, breast cancer, breast cancer screening, Cancer, cancer screening and detection, continents and regions, Death and dying, death rates, deaths and fatalities, demographic groups, diseases and disorders, domestic alerts, domestic-health and science, domestic-us news, experimentation and research, females (demographic group), health and medical, iab-bereavement, iab-business and finance, iab-cancer, iab-diseases and conditions, iab-family and relationships, iab-healthcare industry, iab-industries, iab-medical health, iab-medical tests, iab-non-profit organizations, iab-science, international alerts, international-health and science, international-us news, medical diagnostics, medical fields and specialties, medical research, minority and ethnic groups, non-profit and ngo organizations, North America, oncology, population and demographics, population trends, science, screening and testing, society, the americas, United States

CNN
—

A new study on breast cancer deaths raises questions around whether Black women should screen at earlier ages.

An international team of researchers wrote in the study, published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, that clinical trials may be warranted to investigate whether screening guidelines should recommend Black women start screening at younger ages, around 42 instead of 50.

The US Preventive Services Task Force – a group of independent medical experts whose recommendations help guide doctors’ decisions – recommends biennial screening for women starting at age 50. The Task Force says that a decision to start screening prior to 50 “should be an individual one.” Many medical groups, including the American Cancer Society and Mayo Clinic, already emphasize that women have the option to start screening with a mammogram every year starting at age 40.

Even though Black women have a 4% lower incidence rate of breast cancer than White women, they have a 40% higher breast cancer death rate.

“The take-home message for US clinicians and health policy makers is simple. Clinicians and radiologists should consider race and ethnicity when determining the age at which breast cancer screening should begin,” Dr. Mahdi Fallah, an author of the new study and leader of Risk Adapted Cancer Prevention Group at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany, said in an email.

“Also, health policy makers can consider a risk-adapted approach to breast cancer screening to address racial disparities in breast cancer mortality, especially the mortality before the recommended age of population screening,” said Fallah, who is also a visiting professor at Lund University in Sweden and an adjunct professor at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Breast cancer screenings are typically performed using a mammogram, which is an X-ray picture taken of the breast that doctors examine to look for early signs of breast cancer developing.

“Guidelines for screening actually already do recommend basing a woman’s time to initiate screening on the risk of developing cancer, though race and ethnicity have not been traditional factors that go into these decisions,” Dr. Rachel Freedman, a breast oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who was not involved in the new study, said in an email.

The American Cancer Society currently recommends that all women consider mammogram screenings for breast cancer risk starting at the age of 40 – and for women 45 to 54, it’s recommended to get mammograms every year. Those 55 and older can switch to screening every other year if they choose.

But “we are in the process of updating our breast cancer screening guidelines, and we are examining the scientific literature for how screening guidelines could differ for women in different racial and ethnic groups, and by other risk factors, in a way that would reduce disparities based on risk and disparities in outcome,” Robert Smith, senior vice president for cancer screening at the American Cancer Society, who was not involved in the new study, said in an email. “We are examining these issues closely.”

The American Cancer Society’s recommendations appear to align with the findings in the new study, as the research highlights how screening guidelines should not be a “one-size-fits-all policy,” but rather help guide conversations that patients and their doctors have together.

“We, here at the American Cancer Society, strongly recommend that all women consider a screening mammogram from the age of 40 onwards, and that means having a discussion with their doctor,” said Dr. Arif Kamal, the American Cancer Society’s chief patient officer, who was not involved in the new study.

“The authors highlight that age 50 can be a little late,” Kamal said about the study’s findings on when to begin breast cancer screening. “We are in agreement with that, particularly for women who may be at slightly higher risk.”

The researchers – from China, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway – analyzed data on 415,277 women in the United States who died of breast cancer in 2011 to 2020. That data on invasive breast cancer mortality rates came from the National Center for Health Statistics and was analyzed with the National Cancer Institute’s SEER statistical software.

When the researchers examined the data by race, ethnicity and age, they found that the rate of breast cancer deaths among women in their 40s was 27 deaths per 100,000 person-years for Black women compared with 15 deaths per 100,000 in White women and 11 deaths per 100,000 in American Indian, Alaska Native, Hispanic and Asian or Pacific Islander women.

“When the breast cancer mortality rate for Black women in their 40s is 27 deaths per 100,000 person-years, this means 27 out of every 100,000 Black women aged 40-49 in the US die of breast cancer during one year of follow-up. In other words, 0.027% of Black women aged 40-49 die of breast cancer each year,” Fallah said in the email.

In general, for women in the United States, their average risk of dying from breast cancer in the decade after they turn 50, from age 50 to 59, is 0.329%, according to the study.

“However, this risk level is reached at different ages for women from different racial/ethnic groups,” Fallah said. “Black women tend to reach this risk level of 0.329% earlier, at age 42. White women tend to reach it at age 51, American Indian or Alaska Native and Hispanic women at age 57 years, and Asian or Pacific Islander women later, at age 61.”

So, the researchers determined that when recommending breast cancer screening at age 50 for women, Black women should start at age 42.

Yet “the authors didn’t have any information on whether the women included in this study actually had mammographic screening and at what age. For example, it is possible that many women in this study actually had screening during ages 40-49,” Freedman, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said in her email.

“This study confirms that the age of breast cancer-mortality is younger for Black women, but it doesn’t confirm why and if screening is even the main reason. We have no information about the types of cancers women developed and what treatment they had either, both of which impact mortality from breast cancer,” she said.

The harm of starting mammograms at a younger age is that it raises the risk of a false positive screening result – leading to unnecessary subsequent tests and emotional stress.

But the researchers wrote in their study that “the added risk of false positives from earlier screenings may be balanced by the benefits” linked with earlier breast cancer detection.

They also wrote that health policy makers should pursue equity, not just equality, when it comes to breast cancer screening as a tool to help reduce breast cancer death rates.

Equality in the context of breast cancer screening “means that everyone is screened from the same age regardless of risk level. On the other hand, equity or risk-adapted screening means that everyone is provided screening according to their individual risk level,” the researchers wrote. “We believe that a fair and risk-adapted screening program may also be associated with optimized resource allocation.”

The new study is “timely and relevant,” given the overall higher mortality rate for breast cancer in Black women and that Black women are more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age compared with other ethnic groups, Dr. Kathie-Ann Joseph, surgical oncologist at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center and professor of surgery and population health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said in an email.

“While some may argue that earlier screening may lead to increased recalls and unnecessary biopsies, women get recalled for additional imaging about 10% of the time and biopsies are needed in 1-2% of cases, which is quite low,” said Joseph, who was not involved in the new study.

“This has to be compared to the lives saved from earlier screening mammography,” she said. “I would also like to point out that while we certainly want to prevent deaths, earlier screening can have other benefits by allowing women of all racial and ethnic groups to have less extensive surgery and less chemotherapy which impacts quality of life.”

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the United States, except for skin cancers. This year, it is estimated that about 43,700 women will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society, and Black women have the highest death rate from breast cancer.

Even though Black women are 40% more likely than White women to die from the disease, Kamal of the American Cancer Society said that the disparity in deaths is not a result of Black women not following the current mammogram guidelines.

Rather, implicit bias in medicine plays a role.

“In the United States, across the country, there are not differences in mammogram screening rates among Black women and White women. In fact, across the entire country, the number is about 75%. We see about 3 in 4 women – Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian – are on time with their mammograms,” Kamal said.

Yet there are multiple timepoints after a patient is diagnosed with breast cancer where they may not receive the same quality of care or access to care as their peers.

“For example, Black women are less likely to be offered enrollment in a clinical trial. That is not because of a stated difference in interest. In fact, the enrollment rate in clinical trials is equal among Black women and White women, if they’re asked,” Kamal said.

“What we have to understand is where the implicit and systemic biases held by patients and their caregivers and their families may exist – those that are held within health systems and even policies and practices that impede everyone having fair and just access to high quality health care,” he said.

Additionally, Black women have nearly a three-fold increased risk of triple-negative breast cancers. Those particular type of cancers tend to be more common in women younger than 40, grow faster than other types of invasive breast cancer and have fewer treatment options.

Black women also tend to have denser breast tissue than White women. Having dense tissue in the breast can make it more difficult for radiologists to identify breast cancer on a mammogram, and women with dense breast tissue have a higher risk of breast cancer.

But such biological differences among women represent just a small part of a much larger discussion around racial disparities in breast cancer, Kamal said.

“There are systemic issues, access to care issues that really go beyond biology,” he said. “The reality is cancer affects everybody and it does not discriminate. Where the discrimination sometimes occurs is after the diagnosis, and that’s really what we need to focus on.”

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Colorectal cancer is rising among younger adults and scientists are racing to uncover why | CNN

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CNN
—

Nikki Lawson received the shock of her life at age 35.

A couple of years ago, she noticed that her stomach often felt irritable, and she would get sudden urges to use the restroom, sometimes with blood in her stool. She even went to the hospital one day when her symptoms were severe, she said, and she was told it might be a stomach ulcer before being sent home.

“That was around the time when Chadwick Boseman, the actor, passed away. I remember watching him on the news and having the same symptoms,” Lawson said of the “Black Panther” star who died of colon cancer at age 43 in August 2020.

“But at that time, I was not thinking ‘this is something that I’m going through,’ ” she said.

Instead, Lawson thought changing her diet would help. She stopped eating certain red meats and ate more fruits and vegetables. She began losing a lot of weight, which she thought was the result of her new diet.

“But then I went for a physical,” Lawson said.

Her primary care physician recommended that she see a gastroenterologist immediately because she had low iron levels.

“When I went and I saw my gastro, she said, ‘I’m sorry, I have bad news. We see something. We sent it off to get testing. It looks like it is cancer.’ My whole world just kind of blanked out,” Lawson said. “I was 35, healthy, going about my day, raising my daughter, and to get a diagnosis like this, I was just so shocked.”

Lawson, who was diagnosed with stage III rectal cancer, is among a growing group of colon and rectal cancer patients in the United States who are diagnosed at a young age.

The share of colorectal cancer diagnoses among adults younger than 55 in the US has been rising since the 1990s, and no one knows why.

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute are calling for more work to be done to understand, prevent and treat colorectal cancer at younger ages.

In a paper published last week in the journal Science, the researchers, Dr. Marios Giannakis and Dr. Kimmie Ng, outlined a way for scientists to accelerate their investigations into the puzzling rise of colorectal cancer among younger ages, calling for more specialized research centers to focus on younger patients with the disease and for diverse populations to be included in studies on early-onset colorectal cancer.

Their hope is that this work will help improve outcomes for young colorectal cancer patients like Lawson.

Among younger adults, ages 20 to 49, colorectal cancer is estimated to become the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States by 2030.

Lawson, now 36 and living in Palm Bay, Florida, with her 5-year-old daughter, is in remission and cancer-free.

The former middle school teacher had several surgeries and received radiation therapy and chemotherapy to treat her cancer. She is now being monitored closely by her doctors.

For other young people with colorectal cancer, “my words of hope would be to just stay strong. Just find that courage within yourself to say, ‘You know what, I’m going to fight this.’ And I just looked within myself,” Lawson said.

“I also have a very supportive family system, so they were definitely there for me. But it was very emotional,” she said of her cancer treatments.

“I remember crying through chemotherapy sessions and the medicine making you so weak, and my daughter was 4, and having to be strong for her,” she said. “My advice to any young person: If you see symptoms or you see something’s not right and you’re losing a lot of weight and not really trying to, go to see a doctor.”

Signs and symptoms of colorectal cancer include changes in bowel habits, rectal bleeding or blood in the stool, cramping or abdominal pain, weakness and fatigue, and weight loss.

A report released this month by the American Cancer Society shows that the proportion of colorectal cancer cases among adults younger than 55 increased from 11% in 1995 to 20% in 2019. Yet the factors driving that rise remain a mystery.

There’s probably more than just one cause, said Lawson’s surgeon, Dr. Steven Lee-Kong, chief of colorectal surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.

He has noticed an increase in colorectal cancer patients in their 40s and 30s within his own practice. His youngest patient was 21 when she was diagnosed with rectal cancer.

“There is a phenomenon of decreasing overall colorectal cancer rates in the population in general, we think because of the increase in screening for particularly for older adults,” Lee-Kong said. “But that doesn’t really account for the overall increase in the number of patients younger than, say, 50 and 45 that are developing cancer.”

Some of the factors known to raise anyone’s risk of colorectal cancer are having a family history of the disease, having a certain genetic mutation, drinking too much alcohol, smoking cigarettes or being obese.

“They were established as risk factors in older cohorts of patients, but they do seem to be also associated with early-onset disease, and those are things like excess body weight, lack of physical activity, high consumption of processed meat and red meat, very high alcohol consumption,” said Rebecca Siegel, a cancer epidemiologist and senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society, who was lead author of this month’s report.

“But the data don’t support these specific factors as solely driving the trend,” she said. “So if you have excess body weight, you are at a higher risk of colorectal cancer in your 40s than someone who is average weight. That is true. But the excess risk is pretty small. So again, that is probably not what’s driving this increase, and it’s another reason to think that there’s something else going on.”

Many people who are being diagnosed at a younger age were not obese, including some high-profile cases, such as Broadway actor Quentin Oliver Lee, who died last year at 34 after being diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

“Anecdotally, in conferences that I’ve attended, that is the word on the street: that most of these patients are very healthy. They’re not obese; they’re very active,” Siegel said, which adds to the mystery.

“We know that excess weight increases your risk, and we know that we’ve had a big increase in body weight in this country,” she said. “And that is contributing to more cancer for a lot of cancers and also for colorectal cancer. But does it explain this trend that we’re seeing, this steep increase? No, it doesn’t.”

Yet scientists remain divided when it comes to just how much of a role those known risk factors – especially obesity – play in the rise of colorectal cancer among adults younger than 55.

Even though the cause of the rise of colorectal cancer in younger adults is “still not very well understood,” Dr. Subhankar Chakraborty argues that dietary and lifestyle factors could be playing larger roles than some would think.

“We know that smoking, alcohol, lack of physical activity, being overweight or obese, increased consumption of red meat – so basically, dietary factors and environmental and lifestyle factors – are likely playing a big role,” said Chakraborty, a gastroenterologist with The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“There are also some other factors, such as the growing incidence of inflammatory bowel disease, that may also be playing a role, and I think the biggest factors is most likely the diet, the lifestyle and the environmental factors,” he said.

It has been difficult to pinpoint causes of the rise of cases in younger ages because, if someone has a polyp in their colon for example, it can take 10 to 15 years to develop into cancer, he says.

“During that, all the way from a polyp to the cancer stage, the person is exposed to a variety of things in their life. And to really pinpoint what is going on, we would need to follow specific individuals over time to really understand their dietary patterns, medications and weight changes,” Chakraborty said. “So that makes it really hard, because of the time that cancer actually takes to develop.”

Some researchers have been investigating ways in which the rise in colorectal cancer among younger adults may be connected to increases in childhood obesity in the US.

“The rise in young-onset colorectal cancer correlates with a doubling of the prevalence of childhood obesity over the last 30 years, now affecting 20% of those under age 20,” Dr. William Karnes, a gastroenterologist and director of high-risk colorectal cancer services at the UCI Health Digestive Health Institute in California, said in an email.

“However, other factors may exist,” he said, adding that he has noticed “an increasing frequency of being shocked” by discoveries of colorectal cancer in his younger patients.

There could be correlations between obesity in younger adults, the foods they eat and the increase in colorectal cancers for the young adult population, said Dr. Shane Dormady, a medical oncologist from El Camino Health in California who treats colorectal cancer patients.

“I think younger people are on average consuming less healthy food – fast food, processed snacks, processed sugars – and I think that those foods also contain higher concentrations of carcinogens and mutagens, in addition to the fact that they are very fattening,” Dormady said.

“It’s well-publicized that child, adolescent, young adult obesity is rampant, if not epidemic, in our country,” he said. “And whenever a person is at an unhealthy weight, especially at a young age, which is when the cells are most susceptible to DNA damage, it really starts the ball rolling in the wrong direction.”

Yet at the Center for Young Onset Colorectal and Gastrointestinal Cancers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, researchers and physicians are not seeing a definite correlation between the rise in colorectal cancer among their younger adult patients and a rise in obesity, according to Dr. Robin Mendelsohn, gastroenterologist and co-director of the center, where scientists and doctors continue to work around the clock to solve this mystery.

“When we looked at our patients, the majority were more likely to be overweight and obese, but when we compare them to a national cohort without cancer, they’re actually less likely to be overweight and obese,” she said. “And anecdotally, a lot of the patients that we see are young and fit and don’t really fit the obesity profile.”

That leaves many oncologists scratching their heads.

Some scientists are also exploring whether genetic mutations that can raise someone’s risk for colorectal cancer have played a role in the rise of cases among younger adults – but the majority of these patients do not have them.

Karnes, of UCI Health, said “it is unlikely” that there has been an increase in the genetic mutations that raise the risk of colorectal cancer, “although, as expected, the percentage of colorectal cancers caused by such mutations, e.g., Lynch syndrome, is more common in people with young-onset colorectal cancer.”

Lynch syndrome is the most common cause of hereditary colorectal cancer, causing about 4,200 cases in the US per year. People with Lynch syndrome are more likely to get cancers at a younger age, before 50.

“In my practice and in the medical community, the oncologic community, I don’t think there’s any proof that genetic syndromes and gene mutations that patients are born with are becoming more frequent,” El Camino Health’s Dormady said. “I don’t think the inherent frequency of those mutations is going up.”

The tumors of younger colorectal cancer patients are very similar to those of older ones, said Mendelsohn at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

“So then, the question is, if they’re biologically the same, why are we seeing this increasingly in younger people?” she said. “About 20% may have a genetic mutation, so the majority of patients do not have a family history or genetic predisposition.”

Therefore, Mendelsohn added, “it’s likely some kind of exposure, whether it be diet, medication, changing microbiome,” that is driving the rise in colorectal cancers in younger adults.

That rise “has been something that’s been on our radar, and it has been increasing since the 1990s,” Mendelsohn said. “And even though it is increasing, the numbers are still small. So it’s still a small population.”

Dormady, at El Camino Health, said he now sees more colorectal cancer patients in their early to mid-50s than he did 20 years ago, and he wonders whether it might be a result of colorectal cancer screening being easier to access and better at detecting cancers.

“The first thing to consider is that some of our diagnostic modalities are becoming better,” he said, especially because there are now many at-home colorectal cancer testing kits. Also, in 2021, the US Preventive Services Task Force lowered the recommended age to start screening for colon and rectal cancers from 50 to 45.

“I think you have a subset of patients who are being screened earlier with colonoscopies; you have advancing technology where we can potentially detect tumor cell DNA in the stool sample, which is leading to earlier diagnosis. And sometimes that effect will skew statistics and make it look like the incidence is really on the rise, but deeper analysis shows you that part of that is due to earlier detection and more screening,” he said. “So that could be one facet of the equation.”

Overall, pinpointing what could be driving this surge in colorectal cancer diagnoses among younger ages will not only help scientists better understand cancer as a disease, it will help doctors develop personalized risk assessments for their younger patients, Ohio State University’s Chakraborty said.

“Because most of the people who go on to develop colorectal cancer really have no family history – no known family history of colon cancer – so they would really not be aware of their risk until they begin to develop symptoms,” he said.

“Having a personalized risk assessment tool that will take into account their lifestyle, their environmental factors, genetic factors – I think if we have that, then it would allow us hopefully, in the future, to provide some personalized recommendations on when a person should be screened for colorectal cancer and what should be the modality of screening based on their risk,” he said. “Younger adults tend to develop colon cancer mostly in the left side, whereas, as we get older, colon cancer tends to develop more on the right side. So there’s a little difference in how we could screen younger adults versus older adults.”

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Men with advanced prostate cancer going without life-prolonging medication amid shortage | CNN

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CNN
—

Doctors across the United States who treat people with advanced prostate cancer can’t find supplies of a medicine that may help them live longer.

Pluvicto, a drug to treat metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, also known as mCRPC, is in such short supply that its maker, Novartis, said it cannot allow further supply to new patients until it can produce more of the drug. The company said it is working to produce enough doses to treat existing patients.

“We recognize that this situation is distressing for patients whether they are currently in the treatment process and being rescheduled, or waiting for their first dose of Pluvicto,” Novartis said in a statement to CNN. “Any interruption in the process, from unplanned manufacturing events to doses not arriving in time, may result in patient doses being rescheduled and can have a cascading effect on patients scheduled for future treatment.”

The Swiss company said it has been in touch with treatment centers and providers in the US and is “actively engaging with them to manage rescheduling of patient doses.”

The problem is that Novartis’ manufacturing facility in Ivrea, Italy, can’t keep up with demand for the drug. In May, it had to suspend production at the facility due to what it said was “an abundance of caution” related to potential quality issues. It also paused production at a New Jersey plant that makes the drug for the Canadian market.

Novartis resumed production at both plants in June.

The company hopes to get the New Jersey plant authorized to produce the drug for the US market, but it’s not clear when that might happen. Novartis said in early March that it had completed its filing for approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Someone who has a late-stage cancer that has spread to other parts of the body doesn’t have a lot of time to wait for the company to make more, doctors say, nor do they have many other treatment options. So even if Novartis got approval for the New Jersey plant quickly, the help will come too late for many people, according to Dr. Daniel Spratt, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center in Cleveland.

Novartis said it is prioritizing people who are currently being treated with Pluvicto, which is given in six cycles. But Spratt said the supply has recently been too low even for some of these patients.

“Many patients are missing months of therapy,” he said. “The real tragedy is the patients partially under treatment who have had great responses and we can’t get them the rest of their therapy in a timely fashion.”

Next to skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men, according to the American Cancer Society. Most men do not die from prostate cancer, but about 34,700 people are expected to die from it this year. It’s the second leading cause of cancer death for American men, behind only lung cancer.

Pluvicto is a targeted radioligand therapy, meaning it uses radioactive atoms to deliver radiation to targeted cells, fighting cancer while limiting damage to the surrounding tissues.

There is no cure for this advanced stage of cancer, but Pluvicto can help people live longer. When the drug got FDA approval in March 2022, Spratt said, there was a lot of excitement about its potential. His patients who had heard about the trials have been asking about it for years.

One study from Novartis’ trials found that people who got the drug lived a median of about 15 months after diagnosis, four months longer than the median for people who didn’t get the treatment. For a handful of people, the recovery is even more dramatic.

“There are some patients that really do have those sort of miraculous responses, so it does occasionally give us one of those ‘wow’ moments,” said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society.

Dahut said doctors also like Pluvicto because, compared with other cancer treatments, it’s easy to administer and has relatively few side effects, other than dry mouth.

Another side effect of the shortage is that it’s slowing the progression of research. There is some indication that the drug could help people before their cancer reaches such a late stage.

“We’re anxious to have greater supply to study it in broader populations,” Dahut said.

Spratt said he is working closely with the medical oncologists in his health care system to try to find alternative treatment options, and he’s been looking to get people into clinical trials so they can get access to the therapy.

“But there’s really very few options available,” he said.

Novartis said that if the FDA approves its plant in Milburn, New Jersey, it could supply more Pluvicto as early as this summer.

The agency told CNN that it “is not able to discuss details regarding any possible communications or actions with companies due to commercial confidential information.”

“To be clear, FDA does not manufacture, produce, bottle, or ship drugs and cannot force companies to do so or make more of a drug. However, in general, the FDA works with firms making drugs in shortage to help them ramp up production if they are willing to do so. Often, they need new production lines approved or need new raw material sources approved to help increase supplies. FDA can and does expedite review of these to help resolve shortages of medically necessary drugs.”

Novartis is also building a plant in Indianapolis where the drug will be produced, but that won’t be up and running until the end of the year, the company said.

In the meantime, doctors will often have to tell their patients that they probably won’t be able to help get them this life-extending drug for some time.

“Some men and their physicians will feel that some hope was taken from them,” Spratt siad. “Cancer is the enemy here, not the company, but it’s unfortunate to have that excitement that your physician will be able to prescribe it to you and just not be able to give it to them.”

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‘Am I dreaming?’: Double lung transplants save two people with late-stage cancer | CNN

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CNN
—

Two people with stage IV lung cancer who had been told that they had only weeks or months to live are breathing freely after receiving double lung transplants, Northwestern Medicine in Chicago said Wednesday.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates that over 127,000 Americans will die from the disease this year.

It is considered stage IV once additional tumors have developed in the lungs, aside from the primary tumor, or the cancer has spread to more organs.

Someone diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer has limited treatment options, Northwestern Medicine says. A double lung transplantation offers a potentially lifesaving option for some people with a poor prognosis, but doctors say there are specific criteria a lung cancer patient must meet, including that the cancer is contained within the lungs and the person has tried all other treatment options.

In 2020, 54-year-old Albert Khoury of Chicago received a devastating lung cancer diagnosis.

Khoury, a cement finisher for the Chicago Department of Transportation, began to have back pain, sneezing and chills, along with coughing up blood, according to Northwestern Medicine. It was near the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, so at first, he thought he had coronavirus-related symptoms.

He was diagnosed with stage I lung cancer soon after.

Because of the pandemic, Khoury did not begin treatment until July 2020. At that point, the cancer had progressed to stage II and was continuing to grow, eventually reaching stage IV. He was told to consider hospice, special care for people near the end of their lives that focuses on comfort and support.

“I had a couple weeks to live,” Khoury said in a video released by the hospital. “Not that much time.”

His sister suggested that he reach out to Northwestern Medicine about the possibility of a double lung transplant.

“I need new lungs. That is the only hope to live,” Khoury said he told his doctor.

He met with an oncologist at Northwestern Medicine, who told him he should try additional treatments first. But not too long after, he was admitted to the intensive care unit with pneumonia and sepsis.

As his health declined, the oncologists began considering the rarely used procedure.

“His lungs were filled with cancer cells, and day by day, his oxygen was dropping,” said Dr. Young Chae, a medical oncologist at Northwestern Medicine who helped treat Khoury.

Transplant is typically considered for people with some form of lung cancer that has not spread to other parts of the body and for those who have tried all other treatment options and have limited time to live, according to Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, who helped treat Khoury.

William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society, also noted the importance of ensuring that cancer has not spread to other parts of the body before doing a transplant.

“There would need to be as much certainty as possible that the cancer is limited to the lungs, so whatever sort of extensive screening tests should be done … to ensure that there are no cancer cells outside of the lungs,” said Dahut, who was not involved in the care of either Northwestern patient.

The oncologists decided Khoury was eligible for the procedure. In September 2021, he spent about seven hours in surgery.

“Surgeons had to be extremely meticulous to not let trillions of cancer cells from the old lungs spill out into Khoury’s chest cavity or into his blood stream,” Northwestern Medicine noted in a news release.

The surgery is not without risk, Bharat said. In people with late-stage cancers, there is always a chance of it returning after the procedure.

“There is certainly the risk of potentially being in a worse off situation than they were,” he said. “So you go through a big surgery, and then you could very quickly have the cancer come back.”

Another risk is the treatment needed after a transplant, Dahut said.

All lung transplant recipients have to take medications to weaken their immune systems, which helps reduce the possibility of their body rejecting the organ – but also decreases its ability to fight off infection, according to the National Cancer Institute.

“Drugs that actually suppress your immune system put you at risk for infection afterwards but could even potentially put you at risk for second cancers afterwards,” Dahut said.

However, 18 months later, Khoury has not had any complications and is back to work.

His doctor showed him an X-ray of his chest with no signs of cancer. “When I saw that X-ray, I believed him,” Khoury said. “My body is in my hands now.”

The procedure was put to the test again last year, this time in a 64-year-old Minnesota woman.

Tannaz Ameli, a retired nurse from Minneapolis, had a persistent cough for several months. Her doctors did a chest X-ray and diagnosed her with pneumonia.

The illness lingered until she was told she had stage IV lung cancer in January 2022.

“There was no hope for my life at that point. They gave me … three months,” Ameli said in a video released by Northwestern Medicine.

She went through unsuccessful chemotherapy treatments and was told to consider hospice.

“I had no hope. I was ready for my life to end,” she said.

But her husband reached out to Northwestern Medicine about the option of a transplant. The oncologists found that Ameli fit their criteria, and she received a double lung transplant in July.

When she was told the procedure had made her cancer-free, she wondered, ” ‘Am I dreaming, sitting here? Can it happen?’ And it did happen.”

Ameli hasn’t had any complications, and she said the procedure has given her a new perspective on life.

“Every morning when I open my eyes, I just can’t believe it,” Ameli said. “Life has a different meaning now.”

Double lung transplants for cancer are rare due to the concern that the cancer may come back, Bharat said.

Historically, the surgery required sequential transplantations, but they are looking to alter the approach to lower the risk of recurrence, he said.

“Typically, what happens in a double lung transplant procedure is, we take one lung out, put the new one in, then take the second lung out and put the second lung in,” he said. “The concern is that when you take one lung out and put a new lung, the other lung is still attached, and they could cross-contaminate. … You could inadvertently have the cancer cells spread into the bloodstream.”

If cancer cells cross-contaminate or enter the bloodstream, there is a higher risk of cancer coming back.

Bharat and his team took a different approach with Khoury and Ameli: They opened the chest cavity and did a full heart and lung bypass.

“Essentially, what that means is, we don’t let any blood go through the heart and the lungs and bypass all of that,” Bharat said. “That allows us to then stop the blood flow to the lungs, which will prevent any cancer cells from going from the lung into the bloodstream.”

The surgeons gave Khoury and Ameli lung-shaped friendship necklaces Wednesday to mark their success.

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Most men with prostate cancer can avoid or delay harsh treatments, long-term study confirms | CNN

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CNN
—

Most men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer can delay or avoid harsh treatments without harming their chances of survival, according to new results from a long-running study in the United Kingdom.

Men in the study who partnered with their doctors to keep a close eye on their low- to intermediate-risk prostate tumors – a strategy called surveillance or active monitoring – slashed their risk of the life-altering complications such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction that can follow aggressive treatment for the disease, but they were no more likely to die of their cancers than men who had surgery to remove their prostate or who were treated with hormone blockers and radiation.

“The good news is that if you’re diagnosed with prostate cancer, don’t panic, and take your time to make a decision” about how to proceed, said lead study author Dr. Freddie Hamdy, professor of surgery and urology at the University of Oxford.

Other experts who were not involved in the research agreed that the study was reassuring for men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer and their doctors.

“When men are carefully evaluated and their risk assessed, you can delay or avoid treatment without missing the chance to cure in a large fraction of patients,” said Dr. Bruce Trock, a professor of urology, epidemiology and oncology at Johns Hopkins University.

The findings do not apply to men who have prostate cancers that are scored through testing to be high-risk and high-grade. These aggressive cancers, which account for about 15% of all prostate cancer diagnoses, still need prompt treatment, Hamdy said.

For others, however, the study adds to a growing body of evidence showing that surveillance of prostate cancers is often the right thing to do.

“What I take away from this is the safety of doing active monitoring in patients,” said Dr. Samuel Haywood, a urologic oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, who reviewed the study, but was not involved in the research.

Results from the study were presented on Saturday at the European Association of Urology annual conference in Milan, Italy. Two studies on the data were also published in the New England Journal of Medicine and a companion journal, NEJM Evidence.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men in the United States, behind non-melanoma skin cancers. About 11% – or 1 in 9 – American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and overall, about 2.5% – or 1 in 41 – will die from it, according to the National Cancer Institute. About $10 billion is spent treating prostate cancer in the US each year.

Most prostate cancers grow very slowly. It typically takes at least 10 years for a tumor confined to the prostate to cause significant symptoms.

The study, which has been running for more than two decades, confirms what many doctors and researchers have come to realize in the interim: The majority of prostate cancers picked up by blood tests that measure levels of a protein called prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, will not harm men during their lifetimes and don’t require treatment.

Dr. Oliver Sartor, medical director of the Tulane Cancer Center, said men should understand that a lot has changed over time, and doctors have refined their approach to diagnosis since the study began in 1999.

“I wanted to make clear that the way these patients are screened and biopsied and randomized is very, very different than how these same patients might be screened, biopsied and randomized today,” said Sartor, who wrote an editorial on the study but was not involved in the research.

He says the men included in the study were in the earliest stages of their cancer and were mostly low-risk.

Now, he says, doctors have more tools, including MRI imaging and genetic tests that can help guide treatment and minimize overdiagnosis.

The study authors say that to assuage concerns that their results might not be relevant to people today, they re-evaluated their patients using modern methods for grading prostate cancers. By those standards, about one-third of their patients would have intermediate or high-risk disease, something that didn’t change the conclusions.

When the study began in 1999, routine PSA screening for men was the norm. Many doctors encouraged annual PSA tests for their male patients over age 50.

PSA tests are sensitive but not specific. Cancer can raise PSA levels, but so can things like infections, sexual activity and even riding a bicycle. Elevated PSA tests require more evaluation, which can include imaging and biopsies to determine the cause. Most of the time, all that followup just isn’t worth it.

“It is generally thought that only about 30% of the individuals with an elevated PSA will actually have cancer, and of those that do have cancer, the majority don’t need to be treated,” Sartor said.

Over the years, studies and modeling have shown that using regular PSA tests to screen for prostate cancer can do more harm than good.

By some estimates, as many as 84% of men with prostate cancer identified through routine screening do not benefit from having their cancers detected because their cancer would not be fatal before they died of other causes.

Other studies have estimated about 1 to 2 in every five men diagnosed with prostate cancer is overtreated. The harms of overtreatment for prostate cancer are well-documented and include incontinence, erectile dysfunction and loss of sexual potency, as well as anxiety and depression.

In 2012, the influential US Preventive Services Task Force advised healthy men not to get PSA tests as part of their regular checkups, saying the harms of screening outweighed its benefits.

Now, the task force opts for a more individualized approach, saying men between the ages of 55 and 69 should make the decision to undergo periodic PSA testing after carefully weighing the risks and benefits with their doctor. They recommend against PSA-based screening for men over the age of 70.

The American Cancer Society endorses much the same approach, recommending that men at average risk have a conversation with their doctor about the risks and benefits beginning at age 50.

The trial has been following more than 1,600 men who were diagnosed with prostate cancer in the UK between 1999 and 2009. All the men had cancers that had not metastasized, or spread to other parts of their bodies.

When they joined, the men were randomly assigned to one of three groups: active monitoring or using regular blood tests to keep an eye on their PSA levels; radiotherapy, which used hormone-blockers and radiation to shrink tumors; and prostatectomy, or surgery to remove the prostate.

Men who were assigned monitoring could change groups during the study if their cancers progressed to the point that they needed more aggressive treatment.

Most of the men have been followed for around 15 years now, and for the most recent data analysis, researchers were able get follow-up information on 98% of the participants.

By 2020, 45 men – about 3% of the participants – had died of prostate cancer. There were no significant differences in prostate cancer deaths between the three groups.

Men in the active monitoring group were more likely to have their cancer progress and more likely to have it spread compared with the other groups. About 9% of men in the active monitoring group saw their cancer metastasize, compared with 5% in the two other groups.

Trock points out that even though it didn’t affect their overall survival, a spreading cancer isn’t an insignificant outcome. It can be painful and may require aggressive treatments to manage at that stage.

Active surveillance did have important benefits over surgery or radiation.

As they followed the men over 12 years, the researchers found that 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 of those who had prostate surgery needed to wear at least one pad a day to guard against urine leaks. That rate was twice as high as the other groups, said Dr. Jenny Donovan of the University of Bristol, who led the study on patient-reported outcomes after treatment.

Sexual function was affected, too. It’s natural for sexual function to decline in men with age, so by the end of the study, nearly all the men reported low sexual function, but their patterns of decline were different depending on their prostate cancer treatment, she said.

“The men who have surgery have low sexual function early on, and that continues. The men in the radiotherapy group see their sexual function drop, then have some recovery, but then their sexual function declines, and the active monitoring group declines slowly over time,” Donovan said.

Donovan said that when she presents her data to doctors, they point out how much has changed since the study started.

“Some people would say, ‘OK, yeah, but we’ve got all these new technologies now, new treatments,’ ” she said, such as intensity-modulated radiation therapy, brachytherapy and robot-assisted prostate surgeries, “but actually, other studies have shown that the effects on these functional outcomes are very similar to the effects that we see our study,” she said.

Both Donovan and Hamby feel the study’s conclusions still merit careful consideration by men and their doctors as they weigh treatment decisions.

“What we hope that clinicians will do is use these figures that we’ve produced in these papers and share them with the men so that newly diagnosed men with localized prostate cancer can really assess those tradeoffs,” Donovan said.

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Insurance requirements for prior authorization may prompt ‘devastating’ delays | CNN

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When Paula Chestnut needed hip replacement surgery last year, a pre-operative X-ray found irregularities in her chest.

As a smoker for 40 years, Chestnut was at high risk for lung cancer. A specialist in Los Angeles recommended the 67-year-old undergo an MRI, a high-resolution image that could help spot the disease.

But her MRI appointment kept getting canceled, Chestnut’s son, Jaron Roux, told KHN. First, it was scheduled at the wrong hospital. Next, the provider wasn’t available. The ultimate roadblock she faced, Roux said, arrived when Chestnut’s health insurer deemed the MRI medically unnecessary and would not authorize the visit.

“On at least four or five occasions, she called me up, hysterical,” Roux said.

Months later, Chestnut, struggling to breathe, was rushed to the emergency room. A tumor in her chest had become so large that it was pressing against her windpipe. Doctors started a regimen of chemotherapy, but it was too late. Despite treatment, she died in the hospital within six weeks of being admitted.

Though Roux doesn’t fully blame the health insurer for his mother’s death, “it was a contributing factor,” he said. “It limited her options.”

Few things about the American health care system infuriate patients and doctors more than prior authorization, a common tool whose use by insurers has exploded in recent years.

Prior authorization, or pre-certification, was designed decades ago to prevent doctors from ordering expensive tests or procedures that are not indicated or needed, with the aim of delivering cost-effective care.

Originally focused on the costliest types of care, such as cancer treatment, insurers now commonly require prior authorization for many mundane medical encounters, including basic imaging and prescription refills. In a 2021 survey conducted by the American Medical Association, 40% of physicians said they have staffers who work exclusively on prior authorization.

So today, instead of providing a guardrail against useless, expensive treatment, pre-authorization prevents patients from getting the vital care they need, researchers and doctors say.

“The prior authorization system should be completely done away with in physicians’ offices,” said Dr. Shikha Jain, a Chicago hematologist-oncologist. “It’s really devastating, these unnecessary delays.”

In December, the federal government proposed several changes that would force health plans, including Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, and federal Affordable Care Act marketplace plans, to speed up prior authorization decisions and provide more information about the reasons for denials. Starting in 2026, it would require plans to respond to a standard prior authorization request within seven days, typically, instead of the current 14, and within 72 hours for urgent requests. The proposed rule was scheduled to be open for public comment through March 13.

Although groups like AHIP, an industry trade group formerly called America’s Health Insurance Plans, and the American Medical Association, which represents more than 250,000 physicians in the United States, have expressed support for the proposed changes, some doctors feel they don’t go far enough.

“Seven days is still way too long,” said Dr. Julie Kanter, a hematologist in Birmingham, Alabama, whose sickle cell patients can’t delay care when they arrive at the hospital showing signs of stroke. “We need to move very quickly. We have to make decisions.”

Meanwhile, some states have passed their own laws governing the process. In Oregon, for example, health insurers must respond to nonemergency prior authorization requests within two business days. In Michigan, insurers must report annual prior authorization data, including the number of requests denied and appeals received. Other states have adopted or are considering similar legislation, while in many places insurers regularly take four to six weeks for non-urgent appeals.

Waiting for health insurers to authorize care comes with consequences for patients, various studies show. It has led to delays in cancer care in Pennsylvania, meant sick children in Colorado were more likely to be hospitalized, and blocked low-income patients across the country from getting treatment for opioid addiction.

In some cases, care has been denied and never obtained. In others, prior authorization proved a potent but indirect deterrent, as few patients have the fortitude, time, or resources to navigate what can be a labyrinthine process of denials and appeals. They simply gave up, because fighting denials often requires patients to spend hours on the phone and computer to submit multiple forms.

Erin Conlisk, a social science researcher for the University of California-Riverside, estimated she spent dozens of hours last summer trying to obtain prior authorization for a 6-mile round-trip ambulance ride to get her mother to a clinic in San Diego.

Her 81-year-old mother has rheumatoid arthritis and has had trouble sitting up, walking, or standing without help after she damaged a tendon in her pelvis last year.

Conlisk thought her mom’s case was clear-cut, especially since they had successfully scheduled an ambulance transport a few weeks earlier to the same clinic. But the ambulance didn’t show on the day Conlisk was told it would. No one notified them the ride hadn’t been pre-authorized.

The time it takes to juggle a prior authorization request can also perpetuate racial disparities and disproportionately affect those with lower-paying, hourly jobs, said Dr. Kathleen McManus, a physician-scientist at the University of Virginia.

“When people ask for an example of structural racism in medicine, this is one that I give them,” McManus said. “It’s baked into the system.”

Research that McManus and her colleagues published in 2020 found that federal Affordable Care Act marketplace insurance plans in the South were 16 times more likely to require prior authorization for HIV prevention drugs than those in the Northeast. The reason for these regional disparities is unknown. But she said that because more than half the nation’s Black population lives in the South, they’d be the patients more likely to face this barrier.

Many of the denied claims are reversed if a patient appeals, according to the federal government. New data specific to Medicare Advantage plans found 82% of appeals resulted in fully or partially overturning the initial prior authorization denial, according to KFF.

It’s not just patients who are confused and frustrated by the process. Doctors said they find the system convoluted and time-consuming, and feel as if their expertise is being challenged.

“I lose hours of time that I really don’t have to argue … with someone who doesn’t even really know what I’m talking about,” said Kanter, the hematologist in Birmingham. “The people who are making these decisions are rarely in your field of medicine.”

Occasionally, she said, it’s more efficient to send patients to the emergency room than it is to negotiate with their insurance plan to pre-authorize imaging or tests. But emergency care costs both the insurer and the patient more.

“It’s a terrible system,” she said.

A KFF analysis of 2021 claims data found that 9% of all in-network denials by Affordable Care Act plans on the federal exchange, healthcare.gov, were attributed to lack of prior authorization or referrals, but some companies are more likely to deny a claim for these reasons than others. In Texas, for example, the analysis found 22% of all denials made by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas and 24% of all denials made by Celtic Insurance Co. were based on lack of prior authorization.

Facing scrutiny, some insurers are revising their prior authorization policies. UnitedHealthcare has cut the number of prior authorizations in half in recent years by eliminating the need for patients to obtain permission for some diagnostic procedures, like MRIs and CT scans, said company spokesperson Heather Soules. Health insurers have also adopted artificial intelligence technology to speed up prior authorization decisions.

Meanwhile, most patients have no means of avoiding the burdensome process that has become a defining feature of American health care. But even those who have the time and energy to fight back may not get the outcome they hoped for.

When the ambulance never showed in July, Conlisk and her mother’s caregiver decided to drive the patient to the clinic in the caregiver’s car.

“She almost fell outside the office,” said Conlisk, who needed the assistance of five bystanders to move her mother safely into the clinic.

When her mother needed an ambulance for another appointment in September, Conlisk vowed to spend only one hour a day, for two weeks leading up to the clinic visit, working to get prior authorization. Her efforts were unsuccessful. Once again, her mother’s caregiver drove her to the clinic himself.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Cancer screenings could be back to normal after millions missed during Covid-19 pandemic | CNN

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CNN
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Millions of people across the United States missed routine cancer screenings during the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the prevalence of screening for breast, cervical and prostate cancers in the previous year falling anywhere from 6% to 15% between 2019 and 2021, according to a new study from the American Cancer Society.

“We were thinking there would be a rebound in late 2020,” said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. “We were surprised to see the continued increase in the number of folks not getting their screenings.”

But more recently, it appears that people are starting to return to routine screenings at rates seen before the pandemic, separate research suggests.

Rates of screening for breast, cervical and colon cancers may have returned to normal, according to more recent data published last week in the journal Epic Research, which is owned by the health care software company Epic.

“As screening rates returned to normal from the drop we previously reported, rates of cancer diagnosis returned to normal as well,” Dr. Chris Alban, a clinical informaticist at Epic Research, wrote in an email.

“We haven’t seen evidence that the screenings missed during the pandemic resulted in worsened patient outcomes, though we plan to monitor this trend to see whether it holds over time,” he said. “The recommended intervals between screenings for a given cancer can be several years, so evidence of advanced cancers can take a long time to appear.”

Due to the declines in cancer screenings as well as barriers to accessing treatment in the early days of the pandemic, not only did physicians nationwide worry that screening and treatment delays led to patients arriving at their offices with advanced cancer, some anecdotally reported seeing upticks in advanced cancers at the time.

The prevalence of screening for breast, cervical and prostate cancers did not return to pre-pandemic levels in 2021, the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the American Cancer Society’s new study, published Thursday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The study included data on more than 60,000 adults in the United States who were eligible for screening for breast, cervical, prostate and colorectal cancers between 2019 and 2021. The data came from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey.

The researchers found that between 2019 and 2021, the overall prevalence of eligible adults who completed screening in the previous year fell 6% for breast cancer, 15% for cervical cancer and 10% for prostate cancer. That means there were about 1 million fewer people who got screened for breast cancer, 4.4 million fewer screened for cervical cancer and about 700,000 fewer screened for prostate cancer.

“These declines have significant public health implications as they are expected to lead to more advanced stage cancer diagnosis in the future,” the researchers wrote.

The prevalence of screening for colorectal cancer was unchanged, the researchers found.

The growing popularity of at-home colon cancer screening tests probably offset any decline in colorectal cancer screenings, they wrote.

The researchers also found some racial differences, as the Asian community had the largest declines in breast, cervical and prostate cancer screenings.

“These findings are especially concerning as cancer is the leading cause of death in both Asian American men and women,” wrote the researchers, all from the American Cancer Society.

Dahut said that anyone who missed a routine cancer screening during the early days of the pandemic should catch up now.

“Even in the best of times, the number of folks who are screened is far too low,” he said. “Go ahead and follow the guidelines, get screened when appropriate, and the outcomes will be better.”

The Epic Research study involved data on 373,574 cancer diagnoses entered in patients’ charts in the US between January 2018 and December 2022.

The data came from 190 health care organizations that use software from Epic for their electronic health records. Together, these organizations represent 1,123 hospitals and more than 22,500 clinics, and they agreed to contribute to the de-identified data set, meaning no individual patient can be identified within the data.

The data showed a clear decrease in cancer cases early in the pandemic, which correlates with a decline in screening, but screening rates appeared to return to normal last year, as did cancer detection rates. The data also did not appear to show a significant rise in new diagnoses of advanced cancers through the end of last year.

It’s “good news” that the data demonstrate a return to pre-Covid rates of cancer screening, Dr. Arif Kamal, the American Cancer Society’s chief patient officer – who was not involved in the Epic Research study – wrote in an email. He called the new data intriguing but emphasized that more time is needed to determine whether or when rates of advanced cancers may increase due to missed screenings. It could take years.

“Conclusions regarding whether advanced cancer rates have increased due to missed screenings are a bit premature to reach. This is because cancer takes years to develop, and the resulting effect of missed cancers cannot be known after only a few years,” Kamal said.

“We remain hopeful that as cancer screening rates have returned to baseline, that the two years of missed screenings will not have a long-lasting effect on cancer incident or mortality,” he said. “But more time will tell.”

The data from Epic Research’s study is encouraging, as it suggests that more advanced cancers are not being seen, Dr. David Cohn, chief medical officer for the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, wrote in an email.

“Whether this holds up over the next few years is yet to be seen,” he added.

Cohn, a practicing gynecologic oncologist who was not involved in either new study, said that he is “always concerned” about a decrease in screening rates and the resulting impact on later cancer diagnoses.

Yet “these data suggest that folks are getting back to the core business of screening,” he said, “such that these data will hopefully hold up over the next few years without seeing an increase in later diagnoses.”

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