Anais

Sorry for the bad news. From what I know about brain mets, it could give speech difficulties (aphasia), depending on the area of the lesion (somewhere in the left-side, Broca area). Hope it will get better soon... Anais

I read different sources about the grieving period and psychologists agree that it lasts about 2 to 3 years (it varies from person to person). You don't need to worry for a 6 month period, it's normal. I loss my mom a year ago and I sometimes feel very depressed... Remember, it takes time to heal...

Very sad news. Please accept my sympathy. Anais

Thank you everyone - Don, Jackie, Carleen, Jamie, Frank, Maryanne - for your encouragements. Jackie : I'm happy you enjoyed my website and my father's paintings Anaïs

Hello all, It's been a while since I posted a message. I was very sick for the past 4-6 weeks : blood tests showed infectious mononucleosis with hepatic involvement (hepatitis - a complication of mono). It's probably the result of all the stress I'm going through for the past 2 years (loss of mother, finishing my masters, starting ph.d., etc.). I'm now followed by a liver specialist. He told me my liver enzymes should be back to normal in 3-4 weeks. I'm starting to feel better, but i have a big fatigue... Anais

I've just learned the news, I'm sorry Fay is not doing well... Thinking of you, Anaïs

Thank you very much everyone, I appreciate... Anaïs

My mother passed away exactly one year ago, on Dec. 22 2004. I want to wish happy holidays to everyone on the LCSC forum! Anaïs

Hi, I see you're from Saskatchewan. I'm also in Canada (Montreal). I suggest you ask the oncologist for the Iressa drug to stabilize the tumors. My mother took it after the chemo Good luck! Anaïs

I've seen the interview on the web, you were great!!

Is it the National Post ?

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/515153/ Newswise — A novel test for lung cancer uses inner cheek cells to identify the disease in high-risk patients. In a new study presented at CHEST 2005, the 71st annual international scientific assembly of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), scientists found that buccal mucosa, or cells scraped from the inner part of the cheek, may contain information that separates patients with lung cancer from high-risk negatives, a finding that may support cheek cell analysis as a simple and inexpensive early screening method for patients at risk for lung cancer. “Previous research has shown that cell nuclear changes can extend a significant distance from the site of a malignancy. We have already conducted a successful clinical trial for our sputum test for lung cancer. New data suggest that the effects of lung cancer can also be measured as far away as skin cells in the mouth,” said lead researcher Bojana Turic, MD, Director of Clinical and Regulatory Affairs, Perceptronix, Inc, Vancouver, BC, Canada. “Although a clinical test based on buccal cells is still in development, the method of analyzing cheek cells to detect cancer is showing interesting results.” Dr. Turic and colleagues analyzed randomized cheek scrapings of 150 confirmed lung cancer patients and 990 high-risk patients, using Automated Quantitative Cytometry (AQC). Able to detect subtle changes in buccal cell nuclei, the AQC system analyzes several thousand cells per specimen and reduces the data to a single score that predicts the likelihood of the presence of cancer. Of the buccal specimens collected, the AQC showed 66 percent sensitivity at 70 percent specificity overall, and 61 percent sensitivity for stage I lung cancer, which comprised 47 of the 150 cases. “Stage I lung cancer is considered treatable, but most lung cancers are currently detected beyond stage I,” said Dr. Turic. “We believe that early detection is the key to reducing lung cancer mortality and have focused our approach around detecting stage I lung cancer.” Although the test is not intended for screening the general population, researchers are hopeful that the AQC method will become an accurate, noninvasive, inexpensive, and easy-to-administer lung cancer detection test for patients at risk for lung cancer. “A sufficient amount of cells can be collected by scraping the inside of the cheek with a small wooden spatula similar to a tongue depressor,” said Dr. Turic. “Ultimately, this test could be administered in primary care settings or dental offices. The procedure is simple enough that specimen collection could be done by patients themselves.” Researchers stress that additional clinical testing of the AQC method is needed, using a sufficient number and appropriate sample of patients in order to validate the test’s performance. Researchers have also developed a sputum test that utilizes the AQC method. They hope to receive Canadian regulatory approval in early 2006. Both tests are intended to provide pulmonary physicians with valuable information to help them manage patients at risk of developing or suspected of having lung cancer. “Each year, great strides are made in the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of lung cancer,” said W. Michael Alberts, MD, FCCP, President of the American College of Chest Physicians. “As with any new cancer screening or therapy, rigorous testing must be conducted in order to establish its safety and efficacy. Therefore, we must remain cautious but hopeful regarding new advances in their initial testing stages.” CHEST 2005 is the 71st annual international scientific assembly of the American College of Chest Physicians, held October 29 through November 3 in Montréal, Québec, Canada. ACCP represents 16,500 members who provide clinical respiratory, critical care, sleep, and cardiothoracic patient care in the United States and throughout the world. The ACCP’s mission is to promote the prevention and treatment of diseases of the chest through leadership, education, research, and communication. For more information about the ACCP, please visit the ACCP Web site at http://www.chestnet.org.

Thanks.. Will order the book Anaïs

Who is the author? Thanks

I'm starting my Ph.D. in January, in linguistics, University of Montreal (www.tatossian.org for more info on my research).

Detection of Lung Cancer by Sensor Array Analyses of Exhaled Breath Roberto F. Machado, Daniel Laskowski, Olivia Deffenderfer, Timothy Burch, Shuo Zheng, Peter J. Mazzone, Tarek Mekhail, Constance Jennings, James K. Stoller, Jacqueline Pyle, Jennifer Duncan, Raed A. Dweik and Serpil C. Erzurum Rationale: Electronic noses are successfully used in commercial applications, including detection and analysis of volatile organic compounds in the food industry. Objectives: We hypothesized that the electronic nose could identify and discriminate between lung diseases, especially bronchogenic carcinoma. Methods: In a discovery and training phase, exhaled breath of 14 individuals with bronchogenic carcinoma and 45 healthy control subjects or control subjects without cancer was analyzed. Principal components and canonic discriminant analysis of the sensor data was used to determine whether exhaled gases could discriminate between cancer and noncancer. Discrimination between classes was performed using Mahalanobis distance. Support vector machine analysis was used to create and apply a cancer prediction model prospectively in a separate group of 76 individuals, 14 with and 62 without cancer. Main Results: Principal components and canonic discriminant analysis demonstrated discrimination between samples from patients with lung cancer and those from other groups. In the validation study, the electronic nose had 71.4% sensitivity and 91.9% specificity for detecting lung cancer; positive and negative predictive values were 66.6 and 93.4%, respectively. In this population with a lung cancer prevalence of 18%, positive and negative predictive values were 66.6 and 94.5%, respectively. Conclusion: The exhaled breath of patients with lung cancer has distinct characteristics that can be identified with an electronic nose. The results provide feasibility to the concept of using the electronic nose for managing and detecting lung cancer. Key Words: breath tests • bronchogenic cancer • electronic nose • volatile organic compounds Smelling to establish diagnoses is a time-honored practice in medicine. For example, detecting fetor hepaticus and the putrid smell of anaerobic infections represent but two examples of olfactory diagnosis, which has largely been abandoned in the face of new diagnostic technologies. However, recent advances in odor-sensing technology, signal processing, and diagnostic algorithms have created chemical sensing and identification devices called "electronic noses," which promise to resurrect olfaction as an important diagnostic option. Electronic noses rely on arrays of chemical vapor sensors that respond to specific stereochemical characteristics of an odorant molecule, particularly volatile organic compounds (VOCs) (1). Multidimensional data obtained from the sensor array can be analyzed by statistical algorithms (e.g., principal components analysis, discriminant function analysis, factor analysis) or by structural algorithms (neural networks) to discriminate and identify odorant samples (2–4). Like the human nose, its electronic counterpart responds in concert to a given odor to generate a pattern, or "smellprint," which is analyzed, compared with stored patterns, and recognized. Human breath contains a mixture of hundreds of VOCs (5), which offers the possibility that this new electronic nose technology may have many medical applications (6–. There may be potential utility for electronic nose technology in medical applications, including identification of bacterial pathogens (6, 7, 9, 10) and pneumonia (, and monitoring of glucose control in patients with diabetes (11). In this context, many VOCs, in particular alkanes and benzene derivatives, measured by mass spectrometry of the exhaled breath have been used to predict the presence of lung cancer in patients (12, 13). However, the method of mass spectrometry to separate and identify 20 or more VOCs in a complex mixture is cumbersome and requires expensive equipment and highly skilled analysts, which limits its widespread application in screening and diagnosis (14). Because the electronic nose is highly sensitive for detecting VOCs, and based on a previous study involving patients with lung neoplasms (15), we hypothesized that an electronic nose would detect lung cancer on the basis of the complex smellprints of numerous VOCs in exhaled breath from individuals with lung cancer as compared with individuals with other, noncancer lung diseases, or healthy control subjects. Here, we applied support vector machine (SVM) analysis of smellprints of exhaled gases to create a cancer prediction model using a training set of exhaled breath from individuals with cancer or other noncancer lung diseases, or healthy control subjects. To validate the potential utility of smellprint signatures for identifying lung cancer, the discrimination power of the model was tested in an independent sample of 76 individuals. Some of the results of these studies have been previously reported in the form of an abstract (16).

http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/cgi/conte ... 71/11/1286 Enjoy!

Yes Tami, she was very young... My condolences to her family.

I'm so sorry, my condolences to Dean's family.

I'm sad to hear the news ... Hope everything goes well. Anaïs

Personally, I've chosen to be an atheist/agnostic. I really don't believe God sent a hurricane... For more information about hurricane, please read http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_ca ... icanes.htm Anaïs

Addie, Why don't you ask your onc for a Xanax prescription? My mother was on Decadron (and was overstimulated), then she took 2 Xanax before going to sleep and it worked... Anaïs

PICARD, Francine Denise Former Employee of Foreign Affairs Canada Peacefully Thursday, July 28, 2005. Francine, age 56. Beloved wife of Gilles Poirier for 27 years. Loving mother of Lianne. Daughter of Fernande and the late Jules Picard. Dear sister of Michel, Lorraine McCollum and Monique Smith. Friends may pay respects at a Service in Memory of Francine Tuesday at 11 a.m. in the Chapel of the Kelly Funeral Home, 1255 Walkley Road (east of Bank). In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre Foundation.

Giles, My condolences. I knew Francine a little bit, we wrote a few e-mails. Anaïs

I read in the paper that Sir Richard Doll passed away. He's the scientist who first confirmed the link between smoking and LC.