Effect of smoking, alcohol on feeding tube duration in head/neck cancer patients
2015-03-19
(Press-News.org) Current smoking and heavy alcohol consumption appear to be risk factors for prolonged use of a gastrostomy tube (GT, feeding tube) in patients with head and neck cancer undergoing radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy, according to a report published online by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
Chemoradiotherapy is a well-established treatment for advanced cancer of the head and neck. But its toxic effects can compromise eating and result in weight loss and malnutrition. Consequently, many institutions recommend prophylactic GT insertion before starting treatment, according to the study background.
Patrick Sheahan, M.B., M.D., F.R.C.S.I., of the South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital, Cork, Ireland, and coauthors studied smoking and alcohol consumption as potentially modifiable risk factors for increased duration of GT use.
The study included 104 patients at an academic teaching hospital with squamous cell cancer of the head and neck and undergoing treatment with either chemoradiation (84 patients) or radiotherapy alone (20 patients).
The authors found the median (midpoint) duration of GT use was nine months. The rate of GT use at 12 months was 35 percent.
Risk factors for prolonged GT use appeared to be current heavy alcohol consumption (someone who drank every day, drank more than a specified amount per week, or had a history of alcoholism or alcohol-related illness and was still drinking) and current smoking, but only current smoking remained an independent risk factor in multivariable analyses, according to the results.
The authors speculate there are several reasons why smoking and drinking might have an effect, including that nicotine may suppress appetite so patients make less of an effort to resume full eating by mouth and that smoking and drinking may lead to poor patient motivation to resume eating after treatment.
"Our results would support advising patients with head and neck SCC [squamous cell carcinoma] undergoing radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy to avoid smoking and excess alcohol consumption during treatment. However, to determine whether stopping smoking and drinking can shorten duration of GT use will require further data from prospective studies," the study concludes.
INFORMATION:
(JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. Published online March 19, 2015. doi:10.1001/.jamaoto.2015.0279. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor's Note: Please see article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Media Advisory: To contact author Patrick Sheahan, M.B., M.D., F.R.C.S.I., email sheahan.patrick@sivuh.ie.
To place an electronic embedded link to this study in your story Links will be live at the embargo time: http://archotol.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?doi=10.1001/jamaoto.2015.0279.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-03-19
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Orthopedic surgeons from The Miriam Hospital have conducted a cost-benefit analysis of topical tranexamic acid (TXA) in primary total hip and knee arthroplasty patients that revealed a 12 percent transfusion rate reduction - from 17.5 percent to 5.5 percent - with no significant difference in complication rates. In addition to reducing the risk for postoperative bleeding and transfusion following total joint replacement, use of topical TXA enabled approximately 9.3 percent more patients to be discharged to home rather than to a skilled nursing facility. ...
2015-03-19
This news release is available in French. In Latin America, consensual (common-law) unions are traditionally associated with poorer or indigenous populations. But recent research is turning this conventional wisdom on its head, finding that that in the past 30 years or so consensual unions have become increasingly popular throughout Latin America, including in higher-income groups. In certain countries, such as Panama, common-law partnerships are now as widespread as in Quebec.
Another widely held belief was that only low-income, uneducated women bore children in ...
2015-03-19
DURHAM, N.C.-- Children who are older when they start kindergarten do well in the short term, academically and socially. But as teenagers, these old-for-grade students are more likely to drop out and commit serious crimes, says new research from Duke University.
The negative outcomes are significantly more likely for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
"This research provides the first compelling evidence of a causal link between dropout and crime. It supports the view that crime outcomes should be considered in evaluating school reforms," said lead author Philip ...
2015-03-19
Amateur botanists in the Western Cape Province of South Africa have discovered two new species of beautiful blue-flowered legumes. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.
Few people take the chance to tramp the empty rolling ranges of mountains and the fragmented and jagged coastline of the Southern Cape in South Africa. Most avoid it because of how wild and tough-going it can be.
This region is part of a unique and species rich global flora called the Cape Floral Kingdom. Yet there are a band of intrepid walkers and climbers who traverse these ...
2015-03-19
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Across much of the Western world, 25 years of expansion of the medical system has actually led to people feeling less healthy over time, a new study has found.
A researcher at The Ohio State University used several large multinational datasets to examine changes in how people rated their health between 1981 and 2007 and compared that to medical expansion in 28 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
During that time, the medical industry expanded dramatically in many of those countries, which you might ...
2015-03-19
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (March 3, 2015) - Getting sick when you're pregnant is especially difficult, but women whose children are at risk for developing asthma should avoid antibiotics, according to a new study.
The study, published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), followed 298 mother-child pairs through the child's third year of life. The study found that 22 percent of the 103 children born to mothers who took antibiotics during pregnancy were diagnosed with ...
2015-03-19
This news release is available in French. Research has shown that the health of immigrants is generally better than that of citizens of their host country, at least on their arrival and for some time afterwards. But a team of researchers in Montreal has found that this is not true of all groups of immigrants; children and older people, for example, may be exceptions. "Our analysis suggests that immigrant health policies should not be 'one size fits all' in type, and that they need to take account of immigrants' ages and the indicators of the health problems they are ...
2015-03-19
Physician practices are engaging in new health care payment models intended to improve quality and reduce costs, but are finding that they need help with successfully managing increasing amounts of data and figuring out how to respond to the diversity of programs and quality metrics from different payers, according to a new joint study by the RAND Corporation and the American Medical Association.
Both the federal government and private payers are changing the way they pay physicians and other health professionals, moving to innovative models intended to improve quality ...
2015-03-19
Electric vehicles are cool, research shows. Literally.
A study in this week's Scientific Reports by researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) and in China add more fuel to the already hot debate about whether electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly than conventional vehicles by uncovering two hidden benefits.
They show that the cool factor is real - in that electric vehicles emit significantly less heat. That difference could mitigate the urban heat island effect, the phenomenon that helps turn big cities like Beijing into pressure cookers in warm ...
2015-03-19
Researchers funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have found that two common antibiotic treatments work equally well against bacterial skin infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) acquired outside of hospital settings. Known as community-associated MRSA, or CA-MRSA, these skin infections have been reported in athletes, daycare-age children, students, military personnel and prison inmates, among others, and can lead to hospitalization, surgical procedures, bacteria ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Effect of smoking, alcohol on feeding tube duration in head/neck cancer patients
