Childhood Cancer Awareness Month – Neuroendocrine Cancer featuring Elizabeth’s story
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month! The newspapers and social media have been featuring many childhood cancer articles. It's known that NENs do occur in childhood, particularly those associated with familial/hereditary syndromes including (but not limited to), Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia (MEN), hereditary Pheochromoctyoma/Paraganglioma (PPGL), familial medullary thyroid carcinoma (FMTC); Von-Hippel Lindau (VHL) syndrome. But I also see young people diagnosed with sporadic (not hereditary) appendiceal Neuroendocrine Tumours (NET), most often incidentially found following appendicitis investigations. There are very rare instances of sporadic findings in regular NENs of varying primary types (including Neuroendocrine Carcinomas (NEC)).I dedicate this post to Elizabeth Rooney…
Neuroendocrine Cancer: Glossary of Terms
Welcome to my Neuroendocrine Cancer terms and definitions list providing a source of meanings for acronyms and medical terms, all sourced from top Neuroendocrine Cancer sites. How to use this list: 1. If your term begins with an A, see the list of As etc. Ditto for B to Z. Select your term from the list, the definition will show along with any of my blogs where that term is mentioned – this adds context. . 2. Numerical terms are also listed. Please note I’m constantly working on the repository to clean up all definitions, adding and removing links where necessary, and…
Carcinoid vs Neuroendocrine
OPINION - There's a constant debate regarding the validity of the term 'Carcinoid'. I've posted about this a few times and as far as I know, the debate has been raging for some years. This post was originally generated in April 2015 (and hasn't changed that much!). EDIT MARCH 2024. There is now a consolidated Endocrine/Neuroendoceine Tumour classification system (Blue Book). Still in print but you can see a summary of changes by clicking here. This change should provide some leverage to Neuroendocrine committees particularly about what things should be called. EDIT MARCH 2022. The latest classification system for Lung…
Neuroendocrine Cancer – Horrible Hormones
Updated and reviewed 20th March 2024 Hormonal imbalances are quite common in many conditions including day to day stuff. With Neuroendocrine Cancer, it can be a real challenge both at diagnostic and maintenance phases. In addition to the cancer angle, there's some strange stuff going on, inexplicable, frightening for the patient, an unwanted ingredient causing chaos!Until I was diagnosed with metastatic Neuroendocrine Cancer, I didn't have a clue about hormones - it's one of those things you just take for granted. However, hormones are vital to human health (male and female) and it's only when things go wrong you suddenly…
A spotlight on Appendiceal Neuroendocrine Neoplasms
What are Appendiceal NENsAppendiceal Neuroendocrine Neoplasms (NENs) account for approximately 60% of all primary cancers in the appendix. The other main cancer types found in the appendix are regular adenocarcinomas (including signet ring cell and goblet cell) and mucinous neoplasms such as Pseudomyxoma Peritonei (PMP) or Low-Grade Mucinous Neoplasms (LAMD). Appendiceal neuroendocrine tumours (aNET) (i.e. well differentiated) account for 75% of all aNENs, are mostly indolent tumours treated effectively with simple appendectomy. In fact, most are incidentally found upon presentation of right lower quadrant (RLQ) pain in keeping with appendicitis. They are typically (but not exclusively) diagnosed in younger patients. Poorly differentiated…
Round up of NANETS 2017 – Let’s talk about NETs #NANETS2017
NANETS (North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society) is one of the biggest NET conferences, bringing together NET Specialists from around the world to discuss state-of-the-art treatment modalities, new therapies, and ongoing controversies in the field of Neuroendocrine Neoplasms (Tumors and Carcinomas). This is fairly complex stuff but much of it will be familiar to many. I’ve filtered out several outputs from the conference which I think are both relevant and topical to patients. The list is below allowing you to easily peruse and read further via linkages if you need to read more. Remember, some of these are extracts so do not…