Proton therapy is very sophisticated way of destroying tumours. Now the Swedish Medical company RaySearch Laboratories has signed a consulting agreement with Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden to develop a treatment-planning system.
When tumours are situated in difficult locations, e.g. near the brain, lungs, prostate or abdomen, patients treated with conventional radiation equipment often suffer severe side effects, which include bleeding, chronic infections or organ function limitations.
Although incremental improvements in cancer care were unveiled at the 44th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology held in Chicago, USA, — the world's largest gathering of cancer specialists, our correspondent Ian Mason writes that, even as new study results were being reported, their cost implications for stretched healthcare budgets were questioned.
Artiste is a linear accelerator and CT scanner combined. At the German Cancer Research Centre, a team of scientists led by Professors Wolfgang Schlegel and Uwe Oelfke of the Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology division, contributed substantially to the technical development of the Artiste platform. They report that users will be able to observe and correct the actual position, extension and…
Nearly 14 000 urologists from 84 countries attended the 23rd Annual congress of the European Association of Urology held in Milan, where changing horizons in the diagnosis and therapy of prostate cancer, a symposium sponsored by Ipsen, underlined the main focus of the entire event.
Prostate cancer is the most frequent cancer in men with about 49,000 newly diagnosed cancers in Germany and 6,000 in the Netherlands, annually.
For individualised radiotherapy, high-precision delineation and characterisation of the tumour is critical. If highest radiation doses are delivered in a targeted fashion, the chance of tumour cell kill increases and tumour control probability is enhanced.
Molecular imaging aims at the in vivo quantitative visualisation of molecules and molecular events that occur at cellular level. The potential towards clinical translation is huge, because the same modalities used in medical imaging are used in molecular imaging investigations.
A new American Cancer Society report estimates that there will be over 12 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths (about 20,000 cancer deaths a day) worldwide in 2007. The estimate comes from the first-ever Global Cancer Facts & Figures, the latest addition to the American Cancer Society's family of Facts & Figures publications.
Roche's product portfolio includes three systems for urinary diagnostics, all of which use the proven Combur test strips.
Change is occurring at a rapid rate in cancer care - in many European countries cancer services are now being provided primarily in an ambulatory or outpatient setting with subsequent change of resources. Karen Luker, Professor of Community Nursing at the Universtiy of Manchester, UK, thinks that specialist nurses should not only refresh their knowledge of existing and new therapies. As the face…
The ERSPC is the world's biggest study of screening of prostate cancer. It involves up to 260,000 men, 220,000 of them in the age group 55-75 years old. Professor Chris Bangma, Director of the ERSPC and Chairman of the urology department at the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam (headquarters of the ERSPC) explains the study's background and aims
"If you think 53 makes you old enough to retire, then fine, go ahead and retire. But don't expect the state to pay for it." President Nicolas Sarkozy, during his election campaign
The first European Multidisciplinary Meeting on Urological Cancers will take place in Barcelona, Spain, November 2nd to 4th, 2007. The meeting is co-organized by the European Association of Urology (EAU), the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO).
Emphasis on advances in the use of computer assisted radiology and surgery (CARS) technologies in clinical diagnoses and therapies, will herald the opening of CARS this year.
In molecular medicine - and particularly in oncology - Siemens Medical Solutions is concentrating on further development of the FDG (fluorodeoxyglucose) biomarker to improve identification of certain tumours.
The current prostate cancer disease burden is considerable due to the high prevalence of the disease, widespread early detection, and the relatively long survival time since many men will die with rather than due to prostate cancer. In the United States, one in every three new cases of cancer in men is prostate cancer. Worldwide, in 2002, it was predicted that 679,023 men received the diagnosis…
The Martini Clinic, a private clinic located at the Hamburg-Eppendorf University Hospital (UKE), specialises exclusively in the diagnosis and therapy of one medical condition: prostate cancer.
Urology is a surgical speciality with a limited number of consultants in Europe (around 134,000). The field is very well organised and active.
AstraZeneca has been collaborating with researchers who detected a potential Aurora B inhibitor.
USA - Engineers are developing a tiny wireless device - the size of a rice grain - to be implanted in tumours to indicate the precise radiation dose received and to locate the exact position of tumours during treatment.
Lithoskop, a new multifunctional lithotripsy system, is to be publicly launched by Siemens Medical Solutions at the European Association of Urology Congress, to be held in Istanbul, Turkey this March.
Denmark - Regular drinkers significantly increase their risk of rectal cancer, but that risk is reduced if wine makes up a third or more of weekly consumption, according to research carried out by Professor Morten Grønbaek, at the Centre for Alcohol Research, National Institute of Public Health, Copenhagen, published in the journal GUT.
Prostate cancer, the most common neoplasm in men, often progresses from an androgen-dependant state (and is commonly treated by androgen ablation therapies) to a hormone-refractory stage, therefore making hormone therapy ineffective. The response duration to androgen ablation therapy is finite and ultimately most prostate cancer will become hormone-insensitive.
An interview with Dr Andre Roggan, head of research and development at Celon AG, and Dr Markus Mueller, consultant at the Urology Clinic at the University Clinic Benjamin Franklin, Free University Berlin. Venue: 1st International Workshop on Radio-frequency Induced Thermotherapy (RFITT) for the treatment of BPH