Tag Archives: cancer

Salivary Tumors – that lump by your jaw!

Nodules or masses of the salivary glands are some of the more common “lumps and bumps” we see.  The major salivary glands include the parotid, submandibular and sublingual glands and may produce abnormal salivary tumors.  These glands are responsible for creating saliva to keep the mouth lubricated and help keep the teeth healthy.  The glands […]

Update on Tonsil Cancer?

The past decade has brought a tsunami of tonsil cancer (and lingual tonsil cancer) to ENT clinics.  The Human Papillomavirus (HPV), long linked to cervical cancer, is now the most common cause of cancer in the throat.  The good news is our experience with this newer subtype of throat cancers has shown the HPV-linked cancers […]

Screening for high risk oral HPV

Scary enough the #1 cause of newly diagnosed oropharyngeal cancer (throat and tonsil cancers) are now caused by the Human Papilloma Virus, not by smoking or heavy alcohol consumption. This has changed the demographic of our new “typical cancer patient” to a younger less-suspecting population. Dentists are now performing routing oral cancer screening as part […]

Today I got my Mole Map CD

http://digitalderm.com/ Survivors of melanoma (or those at risk) will benefit from a whole-body photography service to photograph your moles.  This is particularly helpful for those with a lot freckles and moles (like me) with a history of heavy sun exposure.  Us with numerous moles are a challenge for dermatologists because we rely on the derm’s […]

Will Afirma Put an End to Diagnostic Thyroid Surgery?

A new patented genetic test seeks to reduce the number of unnecessary thyroid surgeries. Veracyte is a company that has a patent on Afirma, a genetic testing tool that extracts genetic information from thyroid needle biopsies and compares it to a database of known thyroid cancer-associated genetic mutations. Statistical rigor is applied and the specimen […]

Head and Neck Cancer: When to Chemo?

The latest Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG 9501/Phase III) seems to be a step closer to sorting out just when and who chemo really helps in the treatment of squamous cell cancer of the head and neck. There are several tumor characteristics that we consider “high risk” for recurrence in head and neck cancer.  To […]

Prevalence of thyroid cancer in the U.S.?

From EndocrineWeb: How prevalent is thyroid cancer in the U.S.?.  Certainly a diagnosis that is increasing.  Increasing so much in fact that we may be changing what our our definition of thyroid cancer is in the next 20 years.  Currently we call a lot of lesions “cancer” that are only noticed under the microscope in patients who […]