Cancer Surveillance
The time to find cancer is before it spreads, which usually means before symptoms appear
The David Drew Clinic's cancer surveillance program helps to do just that.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death among American adults. Each year, more than 1.2 million persons in the U.S. are diagnosed with cancer. It robs its victims of an average of 15.3 years of life. Despite the billions of dollars spent on cancer research in the past 20 years, the outlook for most cancers has not changed appreciably. The greatest strides have been in early cancer detection. Screening tests are widely used for cancer of the breast, prostate, colon and cervix. However, these cancers account for less than half of the total, and among these four, screening tests as conventionally performed are effective in only about half. Thus, nearly three-quarters of all cancers are not detected by traditional medical approaches until disease is advanced.
The David Drew Clinic incorporates an intensive cancer prevention and early detection plan into each patient's health optimization program. If a higher than average risk of cancer is predicted from genetic and lifestyle evaluations, these efforts will be more acute. Our programs provide unsurpassed prevention and early detection strategies for cancers of the breast, prostate, lung, ovary, colon and rectum, pancreas, kidney, uterus and cervix, liver, thyroid, skin, lymph system, bladder and others.
Some cancers are preventable. For instance, most skin cancers can be prevented by limiting exposure to ultraviolet light. For non-smokers, the major risk factors for lung cancer are exposure to radon and second-hand smoke, and both can be minimized. Although most cancers are not preventable by any known means, most are survivable when detected early. Their survivability depends upon their size and extent of spread at the time of discovery. Unfortunately, conventional medicine discovers most cancers after symptoms develop, which is usually too late for a cure.
At David Drew, we make an extraordinary effort to detect cancers at an early stage, when removal and/or other therapy is usually curative. Our cancer surveillance efforts are frequent - the transition from curable to non-curable usually occurs over a period of months. Our efforts are comprehensive and high-tech. We employ the most sophisticated non-X-ray imaging tests to periodically scan virtually the entire body for evidence of cancer. In addition, we apply all available blood marker tests for cancer. Through collaborations with academia and the biotechnology industry, we gain early access to the most promising of emerging tests which (like the prostate PSA test) often are denied to a generation of individuals before being adopted into routine medical practice.
Conventional medicine's choices of cancer screening tests are based largely upon cost. As a result, only a few common cancers are sought and in most cases the best tests are not routinely applied. The difference at David Drew is that we want to find every cancer at a curable stage. Hence, we look frequently and in a highly sophisticated way to better detect the common cancers, such as those of prostate and colon, and also to find the not-so-common tumors that together make up more than one-half of all new cancers in the U.S.
By way of example, two of those less common cancers are those of the ovary and kidney.
Both are:
- more likely to occur before the age of 65
- curable if removed when still confined to the organ of origin
- detectable at the curable stage by non-invasive imaging
- usually fatal if they spread
- usually not detected by conventional medicine before they spread
Ovarian cancer afflicts about 25,000 American women annually. A woman's lifetime risk of this cancer is nearly 2%. Although 90% curable if detected when localized, more than half of ovarian cancers are currently detected after distant spread, when the disease is at least 80% fatal. At David Drew, we combine frequent imaging of the ovaries with highly accurate blood markers of ovarian cancer to find this disease when still confined to the ovary.
Kidney cancer occurs nearly 30,000 times each year. If found when located only in the kidney, this cancer is cured by removal 87% of the time. If it spreads, kidney cancer is over 90% fatal, as it does not respond to chemotherapy or radiation. Routine medical care detects less than half of these cancers when localized in the kidney. At David Drew, renal ultrasonography and urine markers are combined to detect kidney cancer while highly curable.
