UTERINE CANCER, DANGEROUS SURGERY, AND US

This morning I lost my link to a new article on laparoscopic power morcellators, and haven't been able to pull it up again.  Hmmm.

You can go to the Wall Street Journal digital and see

FBI Is Investigating Hysterectomy Device Found to Spread Uterine Cancer

By JENNIFER LEVITZ  May 27, 2015 1:10 p.m. ET

This topic should not be news.  It certainly isn't new.  It’s in the news because the FBI came into the fray.  Last year I posted here about this – what the morcellator does, and how it drags those little pieces back through our healthy tissue.

 August 02, 2014

…about the doctor fighting with Brigham and Women's concerning his wife's unsuspected cancer and its spread in her body by power morcellation --breaking the tissue into small pieces for easy removal (and for ...http://henbacktalk.blogspot.com/clipped from Google - 5/2015

A nurse wrote to me once when I was worried about uterine cancer as a Tamoxifen side effect, and said “We’ll just take it out.”  How, exactly?

Just now I Googled: Atlantic Magazine suit Brigham and Women's over power morcellator spreading cancer and got several interesting article titles.  

If you don’t want to Google anything, don’t want to read any articles, just let me read an innocent looking tidbit in the Levitz WSJ article:

Many hospitals and the nation’s largest health plans

either have curtailed use of morcellators or are considering limits.

IT AIN’T OVER.  Doctors still use it.  The other health plans and hospitals let ‘em do it.  Like which health plans allow it?  Mine?  Yours?  Which hospitals?  

In my 2014 post, I was worried about hysterectomy because I took, and still take Tamoxifen.  We know the side effects.  We know the speedy answer to uterine cancer – goodbye uterus.

Yes, but only 2% will get it.  It will happen to somebody else.   Probably.

Why don’t I get with my cancer doc or GYN or somebody and put an ironclad NO Morcellator! in my phone.  In my health directive?

If the uterus problem appears, maybe put no morcellator on my hospital name bracelet just in case I’m anesthetized when the subject comes up.  I might forget to add it IN BIG LETTERS before I sign the permission for treatment.  I suspect they don’t read those anyway.

If you comment, bust me on that because I haven’t written it anywhere but here yet. .

I wish you health.

CANCER, PROTEIN, AGE - Finally good news for Over-65s

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2014/03/04/the-protein-puzzle-meat-and-dairy-may-significantly-increase-cancer-risk/

Valter Longo, director of theLongevity Institute at the University of Southern California is the author of a recent study on effects of people over 50 eating protein.  People with high and even moderate amounts of their diets as protein were in danger of cancer, even death.  Including death from diabetes.

 And animal protein was targeted as a main danger, compared to mostly plant protein.  (How many almonds can you eat?) 

But here's the surprise:  People after 65 actually may need more than they've been getting.

There's a substance called IGF-1 that babies need to grow.  After 65, we make less of it, lose muscles, and become weaklings.  And the current study found that 

         people over 65 could reduce their risk of death with more protein.  

Now I get to the part that lost me:  Even with more plant proteins, there are limits.  
Dr. Longo suggests " 'about 54 grams of protein per day for a 150-pound person...However, going lower than that can be detrimental.' ”  

                  But does he mean for people 50 to 65, or for over-65?

Amazingly, even with my daily yoghurt, I was below 54 grams.  Easy for me to forget that yoghurt is animal protein.  Luckily there are things like my in-a-box split pea soup.  

I wish you health.

Cancer: More spending; more cases coming. No protection, no rules.

Global spending on cancer drugs reaches $100 billion

By Steven Ross Johnson  | May 5, 2015  Article in Modern Healthcare.com

This article showed me a lot about my lack of statistical savvy.  Still, I have to wade in and draw attention to a few things.

According to this article,  global spending on cancer rose 10.3% just last year.  "The U.S. accounted for 42% of all drug spending in 2014. "

Also, the article says  much increased yearly spending according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics (this was a new one for me) has been on targeted therapy.  Unlike the old days when doctors used the phrases like "we're going to drive a truck over you..." targeted therapy deals with the cancer cells and their interior workings, with much less old style chemo, so less whole-body damage and misery..

There have been quite a few new drugs, and something is working according to the statement:

" An estimated two-thirds of cancer patients are living at least five years after they're diagnosed, compared with 50% in 1990."  In my book, two-thirds is still not enough survival. 

And I'm not happy to learn this:"Consolidation of independent oncology practices into hospital systems, meanwhile, means patients are paying higher out-of-pocket costs. "

Then a new phrase I don't like creeps in when  Murray Aitken, executive director of the IMS Institute, is further quoted:

        “The increased prevalence of most cancers..."  

He does give us some hope later in the paragraph, but I'm still not happy to learn of that increase.  

And while I'm reeling from that, the article concludes with:

"A report released in March by the American Society of Clinical Oncology projected the number of cancer cases in the U.S. would increase 45% by 2030."  For a terrible moment I missed the important part:  "in the U.S."   

How many of those "cases in the U.S." will be among additionally insured people, and increasing numbers of older people (you know, like me.)  And: 

 :

 How many of the increased cases IN THE U.S. will prove 

        that we're causing new cancers faster

 than we can pay or learn to cure them?

I think about the things we create, breathe, eat and use that people in the EU, for instance, simply do not allow in their world.  We need to draw some boundaries.  Now.

I wish you health.

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