(posted 10/08/04)

You might be interested in an APA Monitor issue on cancer.  (This is optional reading).

Some cancer facts (courtesty of theAmerican Cancer Society)

• In 1999 there were 40,000 new cases of cancer in New Jersey (incidence) resulting in 18,400 deaths (mortality rate)
• 6,400 _______, resulting in 1,400 deaths
• 5,600 prostate, resulting in 1,200 deaths
• 4,800 _______, resulting in 4,600 deaths
• 4,600 colo-rectal, resulting in 1,000 deaths

5 year survival rates

	Localized	Metastatized
Lung	49%	____ %
Breast	____ %	21%
Prostate	____ %	32%
Colon	90%	8%

Types of Cancer

• Stages
• Localized  -- hasn't spread beyond the primary tumor
• __________ -- spread to other sites
• Types of tissue involved
• _________ = cancer of skin and body organs
• lymphomas = cancer of lymphatic system
• sarcomas = cancer of muscle, bone, or connective tissue
• ________ = cancer of blood, bone marrow

We'll find these at yourdiseaserisk.com

• Breast Cancer
• Prostate Cancer
• Lung cancer
• Colorectal cancer

Other types of risk factors

• Viral infections
• Human Papilloma virus (sexaully transmitted) causes ______________ cancer
• ___________ infection increases risk of liver cancer
• UV radiation (e.g., sunlight) can cause skin cancer

• Suppression of emotion
• Greer & Morris (1978) found that ____________ of anger increased risk of breast cancer
• Shaffer et al. (1987): 30-year follow-up of medical students.  Cancer more frequent in those who _________ emotion than in those who ____________
• Depression
• Mixed evidence on whether depression increases risk of later cancer
• Clear evidence that a cancer diagnosis ________________

• Married cancer patients live longer
• Those who display a _________________  live longer
• Behavior therapy to increase expression of emotions lengthens survival (Eysenk & Grossarth-Maticek, 1991)
• Social support increases surival
• Spiegel et al. (1989) found that group therapy for metastatic brease cancer patients in remission extended survival by ____  months over a 10-year follow-up.

The effect of psychosocial intervention on time of survival of 86 patients with metastatic breast cancer was studied prospectively. The 1 year intervention consisted of weekly supportive group therapy with self-hypnosis for pain. Both the treatment (n = 50) and control groups (n = 36) had routine oncological care. At 10 year follow-up, only 3 of the patients were alive, and death records were obtained for the other 83. Survival from time of randomisation and onset of intervention was a mean 36.6 (SD 37.6) months in the intervention group compared with 18.9 (10.8) months in the control group, a significant difference. Survival plots indicated that divergence in survival began at 20 months after entry, or 8 months after intervention ended.

How to measure risk factors

• __________ risk = probability of the event (say, lung cancer)
• _________  risk = probability of developing lung cancer relative to the risk of some comparison group.
• Comparison between two groups (say, smokers and non-smokers) showing increase in risk due to smoking
• Often given as a relative risk ratio (ratio of two probabilities)

• __________ = study of the distribution and frequency of disease and injury in large populations as a means of determining the predictors and causes of health outcomes.
• _________ = number of new cases (of, say, lung cancer) reported during a period of time.
• ____________________ = probability of developing a disease (lung cancer) during a specified age interval, conditional on survival across the ages spanned by the interval.
• __________ = number of cases (old and new) at a given point in time.
• __________ = number of deaths, often due to a particular cause (e.g., lung cancer mortality rate).
• __________ = illness, injury, or disability due to a particular cause, described in terms of number of cases.