News & Views
On this page you will find news items about St.Anthony's together with comment on some of the current issues in the media.
Morden-based cancer survivor Mark Doel takes part in London to Brighton Bike Ride on 19 June in aid of Breast Cancer Care and British Heart Foundation.
Morden-based Mark Doel, who was treated for an extremely rare breast cancer at St Anthony's Hospital, Cheam, Surrey, will be taking part in the London to Brighton bike ride on Sunday 19 June to raise money for charities Breast Cancer Care and British Heart Foundation.
Mark, 41, is preparing for the 54 mile ride by going on 35 mile ride at weekends and two 15 mile rides during the week. "I aim to do a longer ride the week before the event. My diet has not changed apart from eating more pasta and drinking much more water." he says.
He aims to raise as much money as possible for both charities. To support Mark, please donate by visiting http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BrighterFutures
Richard Field, consultant orthopaedic surgeon at St. Anthony's tells of the "heartbreaking" scenes that he witnessed during two weeks in May treating fighters injured in the Libyan civil war.
Mr Field - Libya - 16-05-11.pdf
Last year David Gateley, Consultant Plastic Surgeon, travelled into the heart of Sierra Leone on the West African coast to work for a UK-based plastic surgery charity.
"Appointed as a consultant plastic surgeon in 1997, I was Head of Department at St George's Hospital NHS Trust and had built up a successful private practice in the local area and in Harley Street. As often happens in our lives, thoughts blossom due to a combination of associations that push them forward in your conscience until it becomes a very real possibility. Sierra Leone was just such an idea. Connections through friends over the last two years had begun to paint a picture of the country and how I might actually be able to help. The final piece of the jigsaw fell into place last summer when I learnt that a UK-based plastic surgery charity - ResurgeAfrica - was turning its energies to Sierra Leone. It had just completed a successful programme in Ghana, training local surgeons and nurses to manage patients with plastic surgical conditions.
So it was that in early December I arrived in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, then travelled four hours up country to Makeni, which would be our home and workplace for the next few days. This was going to be a fact-finding mission to determine whether there were appropriate facilities to carry out cleft, burns and trauma surgery on children and adults. The hospital was a small mission hospital funded by an Italian Catholic charity. It comprised a general area with its own ward, outpatients and operating theatre and a small annex for us, including two six-bedded wards, a consulting room, and an operating theatre. The hospital offered free care to the very poor local population. General medicine, general surgery, obstetrics and paediatrics were available but with only two doctors to run the entire facility and out-of-hours work the hospital was very stretched. Our living quarters were spartan, the food had to be prepared on an open fire each day and comprised mostly chicken and rice with lots of bananas as these grew locally in abundance. At night the generators were cut to save fuel which was scarce. This meant we slept under mosquito nets with no light or fans to move the humid air around the room.
The work was overwhelming, with patients needing more help than we could offer. Our day began at 8am when the generator came back on and ended after 6pm each day. We saw open wounds that one only reads about in surgical text books. Many of these were caused either by traffic accidents - usually young children hit by unlit mopeds at night - or burns. Most of the local people cooked their food on open 'three stone' fires and commonly as the young children learn to crawl they are attracted by the warmth and inviting colour of the flames.
We soon filled our available operating lists with a variety of children with terrible burn scar contractures of the arms and legs, suppurating leg wounds requiring assessment and definitive treatment, and a few older children with cleft lip deformity.
As there was no available blood for transfusion and limited drugs with which to anaesthetise we had to be careful with the size of the operative wound created. We soon learnt that while the surgery required was well within the scope of the hospital, our anaesthetist had no gases with which to anaesthetise patients. All patients needed to be put to sleep using intravenous drugs through a cannula in the back of the hand. He had no one to help with the anaesthetic while we operated and I often had to unscrub to support him while the other surgeon continued with the procedure. The days were long and rewarding and the time rushed by.
We will return later this year and the charity will be sending groups of surgeons and anesthetists out to Makeni throughout the year to continue the valuable work and follow up on those who have already started their surgery. This account fails to describe in full the sheer breadth of emotions encountered. I feel, however, very honoured to have been able to help in a very small way. I have never seen such poverty before. In a country of six million with such a wealth of minerals there is an enormous gulf between those who have and those who do not. Sierra Leone celebrated its 50 years of independence from Great Britain last year. There is much work still to be done."
www.resurgeafrica.org
Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis
The National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE) has recently issued its first ever clinical guideline for ovarian cancer, in an attempt to improve early diagnosis and treatment for women.
NICE has recommended that women, particularly those over the age of 50, who present with frequent symptoms of bloating, feeling full quickly, lower abdominal pain and needing to urinate urgently or frequently should be offered a blood test for the presence of the protein CA125.
Women with high levels of CA125 should then be offered an ultrasound scan of the abdomen and pelvis. If this suggests ovarian cancer they should then be referred to see a specialist within 2 weeks.
Ovarian cancer is often referred to as the 'silent killer' as its symptoms can be vague and difficult to detect. However, ovarian cancer is the 5th most common form of cancer in women in the UK, and whilst recovery rates are high when the disease is detected in its early stages, once it reaches a more advanced stage the 5 year survival rate significantly decreases.
St Anthony's is able to offer both the CA125 blood test and full ovarian ultrasound services. These are available both by referral and can be included in our 'Well Woman' and 'Menopause Clinic' Health Screens.
For further information please visit; http://www.nice.org.uk/newsroom/news/WomenShouldBeOfferedBloodTest.jsp
Smear Test Won’t Save You From Top Cancer Threat
Nearly half of women in the UK mistakenly believe that cervical cancer is the gynaecological cancer they should most be worried about, with only a staggering 4% of women very confident that they would notice a symptom of the real life biggest killer, ovarian cancer, reports research from the charity Target Ovarian Cancer in the run up to March’s Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month.
6,800 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year. 4,500 will die from the disease – that’s more than four times as many as die from cervical cancer - and only a 30% survival rate. To expose this relatively unknown killer cancer and encourage women to recognise its symptoms, one of which is being persistently bloated and having difficulty doing up skirt and trouser zips, Gaby Roslin is today, Friday 26 February, launching Target Ovarian Cancer’s new Unzipped Campaign.
Following the extraordinary campaigning and subsequent tragic death of Jade Goody in March 2009, many more women are aware of cervical cancer. Target Ovarian’s new research shows that 66% of women have received health information about cervical cancer. But the bad news is that only half as many women have received information about ovarian cancer (33%) and, shockingly, nearly a third of women (29%) mistakenly believe that a cervical smear test will detect signs of ovarian cancer1. Of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer, more than half (56%) didn’t know anything about the disease beforehand.
Gaby Roslin said: “Not enough women know about ovarian cancer and there is confusion between it and cervical cancer. Make yourself aware and look after your ovaries, so that you have the chance to catch ovarian cancer early and vastly increase your chance of survival. Three times as many women could survive if it was diagnosed at the earliest possible stage. If you regularly have difficulty doing up your trousers and perhaps look like you could be pregnant, have persistent tummy pain and feel full or have difficulty eating, it’s best to get checked out. They are common symptoms but when they happen on most days make your GP aware of what is happening to you.”
One of the keys to surviving ovarian cancer is catching it early on. If diagnosed at the earliest stage, up to 90% of women can survive because their disease has not spread and responds more effectively to treatment. If diagnosed once the cancer has spread widely, however, around 85% of women with ovarian cancer will die. Five year survival rates in the UK are among the worst in the western world and have remained unchanged in 30 years, with a lack of awareness of symptoms and consequent late diagnosis playing a significant part. Over the same period of time, survival rates for breast cancer have risen from 50% to around 80%.
93% of GPs report that women often experience a delay in getting a diagnosis of ovarian cancer. For the majority of women until the point of diagnosis, the GP they saw most frequently did not suggest cancer. The most common diagnoses were IBS (28%) and urinary infections (18%).
Annwen Jones, Chief Executive of Target Ovarian Cancer said: "There is, as yet, no proven screening test for ovarian cancer, but research has identified the most common symptoms and shown that they occur very frequently - almost daily. Our research tells us that 98% of women do have symptoms, including those diagnosed at an early stage, but we also know that most women are just not aware that what they are feeling could signal ovarian cancer. We hope our Unzipped Campaign will help expose ovarian cancer and encourage more women to seek medical advice if they experience persistent symptoms.”
To help you find out how much you really know about the main cancers likely to affect women, Target Ovarian Cancer has today launched the Quick Cancer Quiz at www.targetovarian.org.uk. Taking just five minutes, the quick fire quiz tests your knowledge of common cancer myths and facts.
