Penn Medicine News Blog Archive: Cancer

This Sunday, more than 30,000 runners from around the world will gather in the athletic field at Philadelphia’s Central High School to take part in the 32nd annual Blue Cross Broad Street Run, one of the largest ten-mile road races in the United States. This year, the event that takes participants on a course past the varied neighborhoods of Philadelphia will also jump start the enrollment process for a new nationwide cancer prevention study (CPS). In partnership with the American Cancer Society, representatives from Independence Blue Cross and the City of Philadelphia are encouraging all eligible race participants, friends and family to enroll in the study, which aims to help researchers better understand the factors that cause cancer.

On Monday, April 23, Penn Medicine faculty will be particpating in three events at the Philadelphia Science Festival.

It's less than a week away! The Festival, a citywide collaboration showcasing science and technology every April, will run from April 20-29. Penn students, staff, and faculty will be participating in all kinds of events throughout the entire festival.

On March 27, 2012, 20 nurses from the Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI) in Tanzania graduated from the first ever OncoLink Cancer Nurse Education Program, a pilot program started in February 2011 that aims to provide oncology nursing training in via e-learning courses. The program was created by oncology nursing experts at OncoLink®, a free cancer information website developed by experts at the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center.

The Choosing Wisely initiative, announced last week by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, aims to spark conversation among both doctors and their patients about the types of tests and treatments that are likely to be unnecessary, and perhaps even harmful. More tests, the group explains, does not always mean better care – and overuse of these diagnostics is a huge contributor to the United States’ surging medical costs. The issue of overtesting is a special challenge for emergency physicians. Most of the time, patients are unknown to them, and sometimes, unconscious or otherwise too sick to explain their symptoms or medical history. That often means starting from scratch with determining what might be wrong, and making calls to their previous physicians doesn’t always yield answers, especially during off hours.

If you wind up going to the hospital to get a tattoo, you're not the only person to be surprised by the intersection of art and medicine. We're very fortunate at Penn to have a skilled tattoo artist who specializes in 3D nipple tattoos along with tattoos for scar camouflage or cosmetic purposes - Mandy Sauler, a micropigmentation specialist in Penn's Plastic Surgery Division.

The nation’s 2.4 million breast cancer survivors already have strength in numbers, and they’re a powerful lobby for research funding and public awareness campaigns about early detection of the disease, but ongoing research at Penn Medicine offers them the chance to gain literal strength.

For years, breast reconstruction options have been limited for women depending on their size. Now, thanks to research from the team of breast surgeons and plastic surgery breast reconstruction experts at Penn, there are options for women of all sizes.

In pursuit of a cure, cancer patients must turn their bodies over to doctors, nurses and family caregivers. But the human touches that are ultimately meant to be healing – needle sticks for placement of chemotherapy lines and blood samples, positioning on the table for radiation treatments and imaging tests, and countless physical exams – often feel anything but soothing. The Beauty of Healing, a new salon-based program for women dealing with cancer that is helping patients at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center, aims to inject a unique type of TLC into cancer care.

We hosted a group of more than 25 journalists this morning from the Association of Health Care Journalists meeting being held this week here in Philly. One of their stops on our medical campus was to the Roberts Proton Therapy Center.