Breast Cancer

When actor Patrick Swayze died earlier this month of pancreatic cancer, it put a famous face on a grim disease. At 57, Swayze was young enough for his death to register shock. Swayze had an advanced case of the disease, as the cancer had spread to his liver. It's little comfort to realize he beat the odds -- most people with this diagnosis don't live more than a year after diagnosis, and Swayze lived for 20 months. In February, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery for her pancreatic cancer.

Hope for a better prostate cancer test, potential new uses for a largely discredited lung cancer drug and a warning for breast cancer patients all emerged last week from a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Orlando. Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in American men, with an estimated 186,320 cases diagnosed last year.

It's been derided as a soup strainer, cookie duster, lip spinach and even face fungus, but if Australian expat Adam Garone has his way, each November the maligned mustache will become as potent a symbol in the fight against cancer as the pink ribbons that blossom each October in support of breast cancer awareness. "I call it our hairy ribbon," said Garone, explaining that supporters of the movement start the month of "Movember" ("mo" is Aussie slang for mustache) cleanshaven and, for the next 30 days, cultivate the facial forest between nose and mouth (no beards and no goatees, please)

I don't know how many of you watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm," the HBO series that started its new season this fall. Larry David has split up with his wife and is living with a beautiful woman . . . who was just diagnosed with cancer. The news causes his knees to buckle. Then the doctor tells him to be prepared for mood swings, depression, vomiting and unsightly hair loss. "Your life will be mostly taking her to appointments," the doctor adds. Larry asks if he'll be able to still play golf.

Hormone replacement therapy, already linked to increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease and stroke, nearly doubles a woman's risk of dying from lung cancer, researchers reported Saturday in a finding that may be the final blow for a therapy that is already in rapidly declining use. The findings "seriously question whether hormone-replacement therapy has any role in medicine today," Dr. Apar Kishor Ganti of the University of Nebraska Medical...

Women whose breasts became tender after taking hormone replacement therapy had nearly twice the risk of developing breast cancer than women whose breasts did not become tender on the drugs, U.S. researchers said Monday. Breast tenderness may be a way to identify women who have a higher risk of developing breast cancer while taking hormone replacement therapy to treat menopause, Dr. Carolyn Crandall of UCLA and colleagues reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "We report that an increase in breast tenderness, easily detected by physicians or patients, identifies a population at particular risk for breast cancer," the researchers reported.

One night in April 2007, as Mike Partain hugged his wife before going to bed, she felt a small lump above his right nipple. A mammogram -- a "man-o-gram," he called it -- led to a diagnosis of male breast cancer. Six days later, the 41-year-old insurance adjuster had a mastectomy. Partain had no idea men could get breast cancer. But he thinks he knows what caused his: contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where he was born. Over the last two years, Partain has compiled a list of 19 others diagnosed with male breast cancer who once lived on the base.

The choice to remove a healthy breast in order to avoid breast cancer is a deeply personal decision -- one that appears to be on the upswing in a specific segment of cancer patients, although there's little evidence to suggest it improves survival. A study published Monday in the journal Cancer found that among women who had cancer in one breast, the number who opted to have the other breast removed, called contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, increased from 1995 through 2005 in New York state.

The American Cancer Society tried to downplay news reports last week that it was toning down its endorsement of the long-ballyhooed screening tests for breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men. But in a statement, the group acknowledged that the "advantages of screening for some cancers have been overstated." Like a lot of other Americans, my first response was: What about me? Medical authorities have "overpromised" and "exaggerated," in the words of a top Cancer Society official, the benefits of mammograms for women and PSA blood tests for men. The popular tests, it seems, too often result in over-treatment of milder cancers while failing to prevent enough deaths from the most aggressive types.