Oxygen Causing Cancer to Spread

Have you ever heard that when someone who has cancer and goes in for surgery that as soon as the oxygen hits the tumor, the cancer spreads like a wildfire? For years I thought this was true. I have heard my parents, teachers and people I thought of as authority figures spew this claim out throughout the years. Well, today at work I was talking to my boss about her mother who has recently died from lung cancer when she said “I wonder if the cancer spread when they opened her up?” I instantly questioned if this is true, because if you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense. I mean if oxygen cause cancer to metastasize wouldn’t something like simple breathing do the same thing?

So, after some research I am happy to report that this is just a common cancer myth. The real reason cancer spreads is because the cancer cells get into the blood stream and travel to other parts of the body where they lodge and start growing. Although the origins of this myth are unknown, it may stem from when a patient undergoes surgery for cancer and later dies because the cancer has spread. Because an individual has had surgery friends and family usually become optimistic. When they find out the cancer spread, people tend to grasp for meaning and causality. They come to the conclusion that the surgery was the cause of the cancer spreading. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. There is plenty of published scientific data that supports surgery as the treatment with the best cure rate. Also surgeons may leave microscopic cancer cells which can cause cancerous tumors to grow rapidly, which could also lead one to believe that when the cancer hit the air, it spread.

So cancer can/does spread in some instances, before surgeries and after surgeries. But it has nothing to do with the cancer being exposed to oxygen when surgery is being performed.

References:

http://www.caring.com/questions/does-surgery-make-cancer-spread-faster

http://www.oncolink.org/experts/article.cfm?c=3&s=19&ss=50&id=1916

http://www.healthexpertadvice.org/forum/Cancer/Does-cancer-really-spread-after-a-surgery-51868.htm

A Miracle in St. Louis?

In St. Louis, Missouri it seems Rachel Lozano received a miracle. She was diagnosed with an Askin’s tumor, a rare malignant cancer that affects the chest wall, when she was just 15 years old. She underwent surgery, chemotherapy and weeks of daily radiation treatments. Sadly, in 2001 the cancer came back. This time it had spread to her bone marrow, causing Lozano to undergo another round of intense chemotherapy. A year later, doctors found that the tumor had returned this time affecting Lozano’s heart, spine and lungs. The doctors gave Rachel a few weeks to a few months to live.

On a church trip to Rome, Rachel was one of the lucky teens able to visit the Vatican for a ceremony honoring Father William Chaminade. The report states that this is who Rachel prayed to, in order to heal her. When she returned home, she underwent another surgery where doctors had found a dead tumor. To everyone’s amazement the cancer is now gone and Rachel Lozano has remained cancer free till this day.

It seems now that the St. Louis Archdiocese says that this was indeed a miracle by the power of prayer and that Father Chaminade cured Rachel of cancer. If the Vatican does recognize this as an authentic miracle, its highly possible Father Chaminade could become a saint.

Now this is a lovely story, and I’m glad that Rachel is going to be okay, but I highly doubt that this was a miracle. There are actually explanations for what has happened. Although it is rare, there is a condition known to the medical field called Spontaneous remission/regression. And this is when a patient shows a significantly measurable reduction in tumor size, or a reversal in the progression of a disease, and when this improvement cannot be attributed to Western allopathic medical treatment. This seems to happen in 1 out of every 100,000 cancer cases. So again just because it is rare for this to occur, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

References:

http://stlouisreview.com/article/2010-07-20/st-louis-woman-could