Latest healthcare news

Breast Cancer Screening It is important to understand that most breast lumps are benign and are not cancer.  Breast cancer cells usually form a tumour that can often be seen on an x-ray or felt as a lump.  Breast cancer occurs almost entirely in women but...

COVID and Reinfection The question is, can a patient who has had COVID be re-infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus? The press recently have documented that there appears to have been a case of reinfection in Hong Kong during August.  Is this the case?  What are...

Ovarian cancers were previously thought to begin only in the ovaries, but recent evidence suggests that many ovarian cancers can actually start in the cells at the far end of the uterine (fallopian) tubes. The ovaries are mainly made up of three kinds of cells. Each...

Skin Cancer Screening Currently no screening programme exists for skin cancer.  There are various different types of skin cancer including: Melanoma Melanoma is a cancer that begins in the melanocytes. Other names for this cancer include malignant melanoma and...

Pancreatic Cancer Pancreatic cancer is more common in men than women.  The average lifetime risk of pancreatic cancer is about 1:64, but each person's chance of getting this cancer can be affected by risk factors: 1.    Tobacco Use Smoking is one...

Stomach Cancer This mostly affects older people.  The average age of people when they are diagnosed is 68.  About six out of every ten persons diagnosed with stomach cancer each year are 65 or older.  The risk that a man will develop stomach cancer in...

Upper Gastrointestinal Tract Screening At present, screening for these cancers only exists for those with symptoms.  Oesophageal Cancer Oesophageal cancer is more common among men than among women. The lifetime risk of oesophageal cancer in the United States is...

Colorectal Cancer Screening This is the third most common cancer diagnosed in both men and women in the United States.  The overall lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is about 1:23, that is 4.4% for men and 1:25, that is 4.1% for women. Many lifestyle...

Most screening programmes evaluate patients with a high short term risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Clearly though, cardiovascular disease begins in early life and with the exposure to risk factors determines a lifetime risk for clinical cardiovascular...

Cancer, COVID and Screening; Where do we go from here? It is reported in the papers this weekend that thousands of lives may be lost to cancer because 250,000 patients were not referred to hospital for urgent checks. Apparently, there was a 43% drop in referrals...