Cancer Prognosis questions...
Quote:
>In my readings about prognosticators in lung cancer patients, weight loss
>seems to rate highly (among others). Why is this so? It seems to me
>quite valid for something like colon cancer, where there was a blockage.
>But why lung cancer, where even if there are metastasis, they are likely
>not involved in the digestive system (ie: CNS, bone, etc).
>I have another general question about stage as a prognosticator in lung
>cancer. Looking over mortality charts, there are separate curves for
>stage I, stage II, and so on. How many patients actually die from
>stage I? If they died because the cancer, say, had invaded the liver,
>statistically would that event be added to the mortality curve of stage I?
>Or is that event added to stage IV instead? or both? What I guess I'm
>really asking, is the mortality on the curve for stage I the folks
>who perished with the desease still in stage I?
>Thanks for any insight you could provide here to me... (I'm an interested
>layperson)
Weight loss is correlated to tumor glucose consumption, which in turn
relates to rate of tumor growth and also succeptibility to chemotherapy.
Certain anticancer {*filter*} have enhanced cytotoxic efficacy under reduced pH,
as is selectively induced in tumors as a result of lactic acid buildup in
response to induced hyperglycemia. For a study of survival correlated to
rate of weight loss and also hyperglycemic intervention in lung cancer
patients, see Lanzotti et al, Cancer Chemotherapy Rep 59(2), 437-9. 1975.
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