The investigators state that the liquid-based cytology which represents an alternative to the traditional Papanicolau test provides no advantage in comparison with the latter in finding pre-cervical cancer symptoms or the actual disease.

The medical world thought the Papanicolau test to be under the detection standards because it sometimes provided false- positive or negative results for the patients who underwent it. Regarding the usage of body cell entitled liquid-based cytology, the cells coming from the cervix are gathered thorough the use of a common sampling gadget and are put into a vial containing some preservation substance compared to the process of putting the sample on a glass slide, a thing which was used in the past. However, even if this represents a new detection method, various researches showed that the accuracy of the detection was not always a certain fact.

The team of scientists undergoing the investigation was led by Albertus Siebers from the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre located in the Netherlands state Nijmegen. He and his colleagues started the research by comparing the screening accuracy of the Papanicolau tests and the liquid-based cytology. They looked at the positive results rate, the histological detection ones and the PPVs (positive predictive values). The investigation had a random character and comprised a number of 89,784 females who aged between 30 years and 60 years. All of the women were included in a screening process for cervical cancer which comprised 246 family Dutch clinics. From these family practices, 122 used liquid-based cytology and verified 49,222 women and the rest of the medical facilities used the traditional Papanicolau testing and verified 40,562 women. The females were controlled for CIN (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia) and were monitored for eighteen months until January. This took place in the year 2008.

The group of investigators discovered that the adjusted detection rate for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia garde 1+ was of 1.01, for the cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2+ it was 1, for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3+ it was 1.05 and for carcinoma, the ratio was 1.69. As the investigators explain, this adjusted ratio did not vary very much from one for certain results of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia in the cases of some cytological call-off.

Due to the random character of the investigation, it can be thought that the propensity of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia was the same for both of the tested samples. This is why the inexistence of variation in the detection ratios and the positive predictive values during the specific research proved that the liquid-based cytology is not more sensitive or more accurate in discovering the cancer affecting the cervix compared to the traditional Papanicolau method.

The scientists concluded that there was not a significant variation in the positive rates provided by the cytological testing mechanisms. However, the evidence provided by this innovative detection process does not bring enough proves to state a similar accuracy in diagnosing women who suffer from cervical cancer. The analysis comprising the intent to treat and the way in which doctors can do this showed that the liquid-based cytology was not better than the Papanicolau test in the matter of finding positive rates of the already studied under the microscope results.

The same outcome came from the positive predictive values. In conclusion, the evidence provided by the investigation states that if the cytological testing is done in a very organized and qualitative screening for cervical cancer process, it does not differ from the traditional Papanicolau test.

Mark Schiffman and Diane Solomon, both medical doctors from the National Cancer Institute state their opinion regarding this research. Nowadays, being a doctor involved in the prevention of the cervical cancer seems to be a very challenging position. Even if the methods and tools used in the cervical detection process are updated and come in high numbers, no corroboration of vaccines, humanpapilloma virus tests, cytology, colposcopy and innovative ways would apply in the same way for all the women. They state that if we deal with areas around the Globe in which the health rates and quality of life are very high, the vaccines, liquid-based cytology or humanpapilloma virus tests could be a waste of resources if they are not taken out in a planned manner.

In addition, the medical doctors believe that the research undergone by Siebers team has made things simpler in the means that those persons involved in cervical cancer screening, monitoring and treating can use one of the two detection methods: the traditional Papanicolau test or the liquid-based cytology. Even if this decision-making process became more complex at the moment when the cytology appeared on the health market, the investigators managed to make the doctors see the exact role of this new detection method in applying treatments to their patients.

Lauren Arnold associate researcher in the department of surgery from Washington University in St. Louis explained:”Reducing overweight/obesity and smoking will help reduce pancreatic cancer overall, as well as prevent other diseases.” The study undergone by her team appeared in a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research called Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

The pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly forms of cancers and represents a great challenge for the scientists that try to acquire more knowledge about it and also cure this aggressive illness. The majority of people whom suffer from this disease die in a two year`s time because the symptoms of this type of cancer are usually noticeable when the cancer has already spread in the whole organism. Moreover, there are too few tests that can discover the pancreatic tumors.

According to statistics, this aggressive form of cancer causes more deaths in Afro-American people than in white persons. The mortality in the case of black people was higher with 32 percents since 2001 up to 2005. The data was disclosed by National Cancer Institute statistics.

The team of researchers led by Lauren Arnold utilized information from CPS-II (Cancer Prevention Study II) in order to discover the similarities and differences about how pancreatic cancer affects black and white people. They separated the risk factors specific for the examined samples and using the prior study observed the marks of the risk factors that made them affect the two samples in different ways. By doing this, researchers wanted to explain the manner in which the pancreatic cancer appears and evolves in both cases. Every person who took part in the study had to give some personal information like: race, medical history and health behavior. With this information, the scientists consulted the Cancer Prevention Study II in order to evaluate the results.

The outcomes of the study were somehow known. Smoking proved to be the highest factor of risk in triggering pancreatic cancer, no matter the ethnicity. Additionally, body mass index also increased the chance of suffering from this type of cancer. However, the scholar found out that black people encountered a 42% higher risk of dying from pancreatic cancer than white people. Nonetheless, even if the scientists eliminated the other hazards that cause pancreatic cancer, they could not form a conclusion. As Lauren Arnold Explains: “We hoped to find that by accounting for known and suspected pancreatic cancer risk factors, such as smoking, diabetes and BMI, and by looking at this in the context of race and gender, we’d be able to explain the higher rates of pancreatic cancer in blacks. Unfortunately, we were unable to explain these differences.”

Team member Maria Elena Martinez who is the director of the Cancer Health Disparities Institute at the Arizona Cancer Center stated that even though they managed to find some risk related differences between the two races, on the whole, they were not able to observe the how they affected the varying mortality between ethnicities. She stated: “The results most certainly point to the need for additional work to explain these racial disparities in risk of pancreatic cancer. Factors other than those assessed by the researchers may be responsible for the disparities. These can include unidentified lifestyle and/or environmental factors, genetic factors or unique gene-environment interactions.”

The thing which differentiates this study from others done in this matter is the fact that a huge number of persons who took part in it were not suffering from pancreatic cancer. The researchers tried to observe what factors trigger the pancreatic cancer to appear and evolve, so they focused more on what was the risk of getting this type of cancer. Moreover, the study is concerned with the long-run.

Researcher Lauren Arnold said that one of the problems with the study were related to the biased results because people who develop pancreatic cancer may do so due to poor living conditions or limited health care. Nonetheless, prior research presented that poor health care does not necessary trigger the most cancer death rates in Afro-Americans. Moreover, this type of cancer is detected in late development periods and this is why it is so hard to combat, triggering a high mortality rate. Regarding this, scientist Arnold stated: “Our data do not explain what is causing these disparities, but we hope it encourages researchers to continue looking for reasons why blacks develop and die from pancreatic cancer at higher rates than whites. Clinicians who have patients with a family history of pancreatic cancer or other risk factors for the disease should communicate the benefits of losing weight and quitting smoking, if anything, to help reduce their risk of pancreatic cancer.”

A distal pancreatectomy is the standard procedure for patients presenting pancreatic cancer localized to the tail of the pancreas, followed by radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy to reduce the risk of recurrence. The new technology allows for minimally invasive surgical techniques in these cases, which benefit patients in many ways, including a shorter hospital stay, faster recovery, quicker return to daily activity, less risk of infection and less scarring and bleeding. The ViKY system improves laparoscopic procedures due to its unique features, like an endoscope that moves according to the surgeon’s orders, either through voice recognition or foot-switch control.

After being tested on thousands of patients in Europe, the technology was used in the US at Fox Chase, which, according to its chairman of the department of surgery, Robert G. Uzzo, MD, “is among only a handful of institutions worldwide using robotics or laparoscopy to treat patients with nearly all types of cancer” in an operation on a 65-year-old man who was diagnosed with two pancreatic cysts. The ViKY assisted minimally invasive distal pancreatectomy was performed by Fox Chase surgeon Andrew A. Gumbs, MD, a specialist in minimally invasive hepato-pancreatic and biliary (HPB) surgery, which described the system as being “so versatile that surgeons (…) are able to use it for many different laparoscopic procedures, including those in the gastrointestinal, urological, thoracic and gynecologic regions.” He also stated that:
“The new ViKY robotic laparoscope holder acts as an extra hand during surgery, giving me stability and steadiness. The view of the surgical field is critical, so ViKY’s pinpoint accuracy helps me perform more complex procedures laparoscopically.”

Image Above: “The new ViKY robotic laparoscope holder acts as an extra hand during surgery, giving me stability and steadiness,” said Dr. Gumbs

About 40,000 women die of metastatic breast cancer every year, distant organ metastasis via the bloodstream being the most common cause of death. A recent study which could lead to a test to predict the likelihood of this type of metastasis could change the way breast cancer is treated.

The study was carried on by researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and identified a new marker for cancer metastasis, called TMEM (Tumor Microenvironment of Metastasis). Senior author Dr. Joan G. Jones, professor of clinical pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of Anatomic Pathology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and first author Dr. Brian D. Robinson, resident in Anatomic Pathology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center state that a tissue test for metastatic risk could alleviate worries of metastatic cancer and prevent toxic and costly measures like radiation and chemotherapy and could also offer a better way to classify patients as either low risk of high risk, preventing over-treatment or under-treatment of the disease.

The study was based on the previous findings of co-author Dr. John S. Condeelis of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine who had previously identified a link between blood-borne or systemic metastasis and a three-part association between invasive carcinoma cells, perivascular white blood cells (macrophages) and the endothelial cells that line vessel walls in animals. Jones and Robinson worked on confirming these findings in humans, developing a triple immunostain for human breast cancer samples that simultaneously labels the three cell types which they called TMEM. In the case study that followed, they proved that TMEM density was associated with the development of distant-organ metastasis, independent of lymph node status and tumor grade, being more than double in the group of patients who developed systemic metastases compared with the patients with only localized breast cancer.

“Traditionally, the likelihood of breast cancer metastasis is estimated based on tumor size, tumor differentiation — how similar or dissimilar the tumor is compared to normal breast tissue — and whether it has spread to the lymph nodes. While these are useful measures, TMEM density directly reflects the blood-borne mechanism of metastasis, and therefore may prove to be more specific and directly relevant,” says Dr. Jones.

The team is currently working on a way of measuring TMEM with more accuracy and working on a way to identify a threshold of TMEM density for metastasis risk after validating their findings on a larger sample group (the current experiment was carried on tissue samples from 30 patients with invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast who developed systemic, distant-organ metastases and compared to matched controls that had only localized disease (i.e., invasive ductal carcinoma limited to the breast or with regional lymph node metastasis only).