Childhood Cancer Awareness Month – Neuroendocrine Cancer (featuring Elizabeth)

Childhood Cancer Awareness Month – Neuroendocrine Cancer (featuring Elizabeth)

General
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month!  The newspapers and social media will no doubt be featuring many childhood cancer articles. You may not see one about NET though. I personally cannot begin to imagine what it must be like to be a parent who has a child with cancer. I would just hope my child would be placed into the care and safe custody of experienced medical teams and would be able to get access to the best treatments available. I don't know that much about Childhood cancers, but I do know that over half of childhood cancers are either Acute Leukaemias or Brain Cancer, both of which are frequently in the news. It always breaks my heart when I read stories of children with cancer. I do know a…
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A spotlight on Appendiceal Neuroendocrine Neoplasms

A spotlight on Appendiceal Neuroendocrine Neoplasms

A spotlight on NENs - Types, Awareness, Patient Advocacy, Spotlight on NENs - Types Series
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 appendiceal Neuroendocrine Carcinomas (aNEC) resemble small-cell or large-cell neuroendocrine carcinomas of the lung, have aggressive behaviour, and usually present with metastatic disease at diagnosis.Mixed neuroendocrine-non-neuroendocrine neoplasms (MiNEN) are possible, particularly…
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Neuroendocrine Cancer:  Glossary of Terms

Neuroendocrine Cancer: Glossary of Terms

Awareness, Clinical Trials and Research, Diet and Nutrition, Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer, Patient Advocacy, Survivorship, Treatment
Welcome to my Neuroendocrine Cancer Glossary of Terms list providing a source of meanings for acronyms and medical terms, all sourced from top Neuroendocrine Cancer and general cancer sites. How to use this list:1. If your term begins with an A, click on A to find all terms beginning with A.  Select your term from the list.2. For numerical terms, please click on the hashtag (#) symbol in the A-to-Z strip.3. The term definition including acronym or abbreviation will be given in full along with any of my published articles containing that term as long as I have tagged it on my website to display in the list. Please note I'm constantly working on the repository to clean up all definitions, adding and removing links where necessary, and ensuring all definitions are…
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Round up of NANETS 2017 – Let’s talk about NETs #NANETS2017

Awareness, Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer, Patient Advocacy, Survivorship, Treatment
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 contain all the details of the research or study – although some of the linkages will take you to in-depth information if that’s your bag. Where applicable, I’ve also linked…
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Carcinoid vs Neuroendocrine

Carcinoid vs Neuroendocrine

Awareness, Patient Advocacy
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. EDIT MARCH 2022.  The latest classification system for Lung Neuroendocrine Neoplasms (NEN) confirms the word "carcinoid" is now a choice - the WHO Lung Committee bottled it.  I made my choice some years ago, I hope others follow suit.  Read more about changes to Lung NEN by clicking here. EDIT APRIL 2020.  The latest classification system for Neuroendocrine Neoplasms confirms the word "carcinoid" no longer forms part of the terminology used in Digestive System tumours (effectively removing the term from GEP NETs) - read more - click here Edit May 2020.  So, what about other areas not included in…
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Neuroendocrine Cancer – Horrible Hormones

Neuroendocrine Cancer – Horrible Hormones

Patient Advocacy
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 appreciate how important they are.  Hormones are involved in many conditions, not just an issue with Neuroendocrine Tumours (NETs) but the presence of over-secreting hormones (often called peptides throughout) is useful to aid a diagnosis, albeit…
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