On the pulse


Cancerkin’s news…

Lymphoedema clinic’s coming of age

Last Tuesday, Cancerkin’s lymphoedema clinic celebrated its 21st Birthday! The clinic has now been providing a gold standard care to breast cancer patients with lymphoedema for over two decades and, as a result, it consistently receives outstanding levels of feedback. In our 2010 patient survey, it was scored 10 out of 10 by 92% of its patients.

Our lymphoedema therapists are supported by a dedicated team of six volunteers who manage the smooth day-to-day running of the clinic and are loved by patients and staff alike. Together with our CEO Victoria Todd, we would like to extend our thanks to these fantastic women - Helen Bennett, Evelyn Ellis, Pat Gussetti, Monika Hashmi, Melanie Kornitzer and Renate Tingay - for all their hard work over the years. Thank you!


Hyde Park Walk 2011

Registration is now open for Cancerkin’s annual sponsored Hyde Park Walk and we have already received lots of entries! If you have not yet received your invitation and registration form, it will be in the post to you this week, otherwise do contact l.smith@cancerkin.org.uk to request a form. This year’s walk will take place on Sunday 19th June 2011 at 10.30am and we hope to see as many of you there as possible!


Lectures in June

We are pleased to announce that in June, we will be holding two lectures here at the Cancerkin Centre, which will be open to all our patients and supporters.

Mr Mohammed Keshtgar FRCSI FRCS (Gen) PhD, Consultant Surgical Oncologist at the Royal Free and Whittington Hospitals will present the first lecture on 6th June 2011 at 3pm, which will be followed by a question and answer session.

The second lecture will be given by Dr Anmol Malhotra MB BS BSc(Hons) MRCP FRCR, Consultant Radiologist and Clinical Lead at the Royal Free. It will take place on 28th June 2011 at 11am. Dr Malhotra will talk about recent developments in breast imaging before taking questions from the audience.

To reserve a place at either of these events, please contact Laura on 0207 830 2323 or email l.smith@cancerkin.org.uk.



In the news…

New study into cancer and alcohol

As discussed in last week’s edition, the role that alcohol plays in determining breast cancer risk has been well documented. Research shows that the more a woman drinks, the more her risk of developing the disease increases. It is also known that alcohol consumption increases risk of mouth, throat, bowel and liver cancer.

A new report published in the British Medical Journal this week shows that at least 13,000 cases of cancer a year in the UK are caused by alcohol. Research as part of the Cancer Research UK-funded European Prospective Investigation of Cancer study (EPIC), which looks into the links between diet and cancer, has examined how drinking different amounts of alcohol affects cancer risk and has combined this with figures of how much British people drink. Researchers found that alcohol had the biggest effect on cancers of the mouth, food-pipe, voice-box and pharynx, lying at the cause of around 6,000 cases a year. It was found to cause more than 3,000 cases of colorectal cancers and around 2,500 cases of breast cancer each year.

As Cancer Research UK’s press release on the report highlighted this week, the results have worrying implications. Naomi Allen, a Cancer Research UK epidemiologist working on the EPIC study, said: “This research supports existing evidence that alcohol causes cancer and that the risk increases even with drinking moderate amounts. The results from this study reflect the impact of people’s drinking habits about ten years ago. People are drinking even more now than then and this could lead to more people developing cancer because of alcohol in the future.” Government figures from the Office of National Statistics published last week support this and show that an increasing number of women are drinking well over the recommended limit of alcohol for a week. As we saw last week, even one drink a day can increase a woman’s breast cancer risk and so these statistics are of great concern.

To read more, please click here.


Laura Smith 15th April 2011