Nodes

The following is a primer on precancerous and cancerous conditions that affect the breast. Lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS): Even though this condition comes with "carcinoma" as part of its name, it is not a cancer but a marker for cancer. Changes seen in cells of the lobules suggest that cancer could occur in the future. Both breasts are at elevated cancer risk when LCIS is discovered even on only one side. These patients, Hudis and other specialists say, must be monitored closely.

Although non-Hodgkin's lymphoma like that contracted by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is normally considered one of the more curable cancers, nearly half of those who develop it die within five years. "Even in the best of (treatment) programs, one-third of patients don't respond well, and two-thirds ultimately die of the disease," said Dr. Rex Greene, chief of the cancer teaching program at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena.

State health officials ordered a ban on the sale, importation and display of prairie dogs after 14 people were sickened from exposure to the animals. Health officials said the 12 people in Wisconsin who reported fever, coughs, rashes and swollen lymph nodes had recovered or were getting better. Two others were sickened in Illinois. Wisconsin agriculture officials connected all 14 sicknesses to a single shipment of 30 of the burrowing rodents.

The Ventura County Medical Resource Foundation has donated a gamma probe, a radiation-detection device, to the Ventura County Medical Center. An increasing number of medical centers across the nation are using gamma probes during surgery to assess the involvement of lymph nodes in certain types of cancer, said Mary Howard, the foundation's executive director. Surgeons can measure the extent of breast and liver cancer and malignant melanoma cases with the device, Howard said.