39 per cent of
all cancers in men are tobacco-related
Tobacco and its
link to cancers of the oral cavity and neck are well-established and fairly
well-known to the public too.
In Kerala,
which has the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of alcohol
consumption in the country, the rate of head and neck cancers too are quite
high.
It is estimated
that 36 per cent of the men, aged above 15, in the State are smokers, with 11
per cent using chewing-tobacco too.
As per the data
of the Regional Cancer Centre’s cancer registry, 39 per cent of all cancers in
men are tobacco-related. Kerala has one of the highest reported incidence of
head and neck cancers, which constitute over 30 per cent of all cancers in the
Indian subcontinent.
A new study
involving over one lakh subjects in the U.S., as part of a prostate, lung,
colorectal and ovarian cancer screening trial, found that 50.5 per cent of all
head and neck cancers could be attributed to tobacco. The study has been
published inPubMed, an online repository of health research of the U.S.
National Institutes of Health.
The study
reported that 66 per cent of head and neck cancers could be attributed to both
tobacco and alcohol, 14.7 per cent to alcohol alone.
Head and neck
cancers are ranked sixth among the common cancers worldwide and nearly 3,00,000
people die each year out of 4,00,000 approximate cases of cancers of the mouth
or pharynx or larynx, as per the World Cancer Report, 2008. The World Cancer
Report is brought out jointly by the World Health Organisation and
International Agency for Research on Cancer.
The treatment
options for head and neck cancers include surgery, radiotherapy, and
chemotherapy, used in isolation or in combination, depending on the site of the
cancer, the stage at which it is diagnosed, and the general health of the
patient. Invariably, most of these cancers reach the oncologists at a very late
stage, when chances of a better prognosis are quite dim.
Study
significant
The U.S. study
has significance for Kerala as it quantifies the existing knowledge and
establishes cigarette smoking and tobacco use as an undeniable causative factor
of head and neck cancers, Subramania Iyer, who heads the Head and Neck Institute
at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Kochi, said.
Tobacco control
is thus the single, biggest public health intervention that can be implemented
to bring down cancer incidence across the board, doctors point out.
Kerala has one of the highest reported incidence of head and neck cancers.
No comments:
Post a Comment