The boys attend Mackay West Primary and Mackay North High schools, where children were at risk of being exposed to the fatal substance after asbestos was disturbed.

“I am in a situation where I had to speak up,” Mr Connors said….

“Two of my children have been involved and from a parental point of view I am concerned.”

He said his son would not be returning to Mackay North High until he had confirmation from the school that asbestos was no longer in the classrooms and had been removed correctly.

Yesterday, an investigation team from the Department of Education and Training was at Mackay North State High School to begin a probe into an incident where children were evacuated from classrooms following an asbestos scare.

Mr Connors, who in the 1990s removed asbestos in the ACT, said he had undertaken an Asbestos Removal (Residential) Course through the ACT Institute of Technical and Further Education.

He said he was contracted to remove loose asbestos from 1000 homes in the ACT.

“There are codes in this country and they are put in place for a reason… They should be followed at all times… if you break these, there is a jail term.”

Mr Connors said he did not know the situation on the school sites, or what was used during the removal of the asbestos, but said there had been no mention of air monitors being used.

The Federal National Occupational Health and Safety Commission’s Code for the Safe Removal of Asbestos defines air monitoring as airborne asbestos fibre sampling to assist in assessing exposures and the effectiveness of control measures.

Mr Connors said he wanted to know if the subcontractors who cleaned the classrooms last Tuesday night took the right precautions and were being monitored on removing the asbestos correctly.

“QBuild is playing Russian roulette with our kids,” he said.

“Once asbestos is airborne it is dangerous.”

via:dailymercury.com.au

Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer in which malignant cells are found in the mesothelium, a protective sac that covers most of the body’s internal organs. Pleural mesothelioma refers to the thoracic-based form of the disease, the most common type of mesothelioma.

Although asbestos exposure is a major risk factor for mesothelioma, it can remain latent for more than 20 years and may require a predisposition to the disease. In addition, it can also occur in individuals that previously experienced radiation exposure (e.g. treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma).

Dr. Krug noted that, “Diagnosing mesothelioma is often difficult, because the symptoms are similar to those of a number of other conditions. In addition, a physician’s initial evaluation of a patient may reveal pleural effusion, but it can often be missed on pleural fluid cytology.”

Common symptoms of mesothelioma are shortness or breath or chest pain among others including tumor fevers, sweats, weight loss, and pneumonia.

A surgical biopsy is often required to effectively diagnose a patient with mesothelioma according to Dr. Krug. PET scans can aid in staging as well, detecting unexpected metastases in 10 percent of cases.

Prognostic factors include gender, lymph node status, and histology, but Dr. Krug also pointed to other potential markers that may be indicative of the disease.

“Serum markers may also have prognostic significance as studies show that patients with mesothelioma have higher levels of Soluble Mesothelin-Relation Protein (SMRP) and Osteopontin,” said Dr. Krug.

Like any cancer, treatment for mesothelioma depends on many factors including the stage of the cancer, where the cancer is, and how far the cancer has spread. Dr. Krug described treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation that may benefit patients as described in the NCCN Guidelines for MPM.

Surgical procedures for MPM can range from a pleurectomy/decortication for those patients with early stage disease to more aggressive procedures, such as extrapleural pneumonectomy. Extrapleural pneumonectomy includes the removal of pleura, the lung, diaphragm, and pericardium, but can result in major complications and should only be performed by experienced surgeons.

“The role of aggressive surgery remains controversial,” said Dr. Krug. “As outlined in the Principles for Surgical Resection for Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma in the NCCN Guidelines, physicians need to be highly selective when choosing potential candidates for this procedure.”

Surgery alone can be inadequate due to residual disease and a high rate of relapse, so the NCCN Guidelines recommend a combined modality therapy approach for select patients noted Dr. Krug.

The NCCN Guidelines consist of a section detailing the Principles of Radiation Therapy for MPM that stress the need for a multimodality approach including evaluation of the patient by radiation oncologists, surgeons, medical oncologists, diagnostic imaging specialists, and pulmonologists.

“Radiation is recommended as an adjuvant therapy to improve local control after surgery, and it is also an effective palliative treatment for relief of chest pain that is often associated with mesothelioma,” said Dr. Krug…. ….

Dr. Krug explained that MPM was historically felt to be chemoresistant, but that recent studies have shown that certain regimens can benefit patients and also can be added for systemic therapy either before or after surgery.

“The NCCN Guidelines recommends pemetrexed (Alimta®, Lilly USA, LLC) with cisplatin (Platinol®, Bristol-Myers Squibb) or carboplatin (Paraplatin®, Bristol-Myers Squibb) as the optimal first-line combination chemotherapy regimen for patients, though others can be considered based on comorbid conditions,” said Dr. Krug. “On the other hand, there are extremely limited data on the benefit of second line therapy. A few specific regimens are listed as second line options in the NCCN Guidelines.”

via:medicalnewstoday.com

The device is already on sale in Europe, and its maker, Abbott Laboratories, hopes to win approval to sell it in the United States next year. Elizabeth Taylor reportedly got one last fall — the 77-year-old actress told fans about it on Twitter.

About 8 million people in the U.S. and Europe have leaky mitral valves — the valve between the heart’s left upper and lower chambers. Not all are so bad they need treatment, but the worst cases can lead to heart failure over time.

In the study, six times more people who had surgery suffered complications during the next month than those who got Abbott’s MitraClip. Deaths, strokes and blood transfusions were less common with the device. The clip was not dramatically less effective than surgery after one year.

Doctors called the study a watershed — the first big test of repairing or replacing heart valves through arteries rather than drastic surgery.

The MitraClip is only for the mitral valve. Other devices for other heart valves are in late-stage testing, and many doctors believe they will transform how these conditions are treated in the near future.

“We have opened the door for a new therapeutic option for patients,” said Dr. Ted Feldman of NorthShore University Health System in Evanston, Ill.

He led the new study and gave results Sunday at an American College of Cardiology conference. The study was sponsored by Evalve Inc., which developed the device. Evalve was sold last year to North Chicago, Ill.-based Abbott, and Feldman consults for the firm.

Some surgeons were not convinced the device is close to surgery’s effectiveness, and said patients need to be studied for more than one year.

“It’s a partial victory for the device,” Dr. James McClurken, a surgeon at Temple University in Philadelphia, said of the result. McClurken also is the conference chairman.

The study used an outdated method of surgery that minimizes its true benefit, said Dr. J. Scott Millikan, a surgeon at the Billings Clinic in Montana.

“Clearly this is a very exciting technology,” but the study’s leaders “set the bar for success way too low” for the device, he said.

The mitral valve is like a saloon door that opens to let blood flow into the heart’s main pumping chamber. When the flaps of the door don’t swing completely shut, blood flows back into an upper chamber of the heart.

Medicines can ease symptoms but do not keep the valve problem from getting worse. Bad cases are treated with open-heart surgery: Doctors partly stitch the flaps together in the middle, allowing blood to flow on either side but keeping them aligned during each heartbeat…..

The MitraClip imitates those stitches. With the patient under general anesthesia, doctors push a tube into a blood vessel in the groin and guide it into the heart. The device, a fabric-covered metal clothespin, is mounted on the end of the tube and clips the two flaps of the valve together.

In the study, 184 people were assigned to get the clip and the procedure was successful in 136. Major complications occurred in 10 percent of people treated with the clip compared with 57 percent of 79 other patients treated with surgery. Two surgery patients died, two suffered major strokes, and four needed emergency heart surgery; none of the clip patients had those problems.

That made the device much safer than surgery, researchers said.

As for effectiveness, the study was only designed to see if the device was not substantially inferior to surgery and by that measure, it passed.

After one year, valve problems were sufficiently resolved in 72 percent of device patients and 88 percent of surgery patients.

Surgery is better, “but it’s not so much better that patients, given the choice, want to undergo the open-heart procedure,” especially given the difference in safety, Feldman said. “Part of what makes this attractive is that when the clip doesn’t work, surgery remains an option,” so the less drastic treatment could be tried first, he added.

The results are “very enticing and very exciting,” although longer-term study is needed, said Dr. Robert Bonow, a former American Heart Association president and chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“The surgeons would argue this is less good of a result. But from the patient’s point of view, this might be exactly what you need” to turn a big problem into a mild one that does not need further treatment, Bonow said.

Dr. Donald Glower, a Duke University cardiac surgeon who co-led the study, agreed.

“This is part of the trade-off we have” with many treatments that avoid surgery. “It’s probably not realistic” to expect it to be as good, he said.

No price for the device has been set in the U.S., but it sells for about $27,000 in Europe, plus whatever doctors and hospitals charge to implant it — as yet unknown.

“You have to look at it always in comparison to the alternative” — valve surgery costs $50,000 or more, including a longer hospital stay, said John Capek, executive vice president of Abbott’s medical devices division.

via:news.yahoo.com

In the 1970s, scientist Richard Ablin discovered that elevated levels of an enzyme made by the prostate gland could indicate cancer.

The PSA test was developed as a result.

But Dr Ablin is now describing the test as a “hugely expensive public health disaster”, arguing drug companies and advocates have pushed its overuse, leading to millions of men having unnecessary treatments.

Director of the St Vincent’s prostate cancer clinic Phillip Stricker says the comments are biased but agrees the test does need to be used wisely.

“The last thing you want to be doing is wasting valuable health dollars to pick up early cancers in older men,” he said.

“That’s rule one. And rule two is, not every person who gets diagnosed needs to be treated.”

Dr Stricker says while the test is not the Holy Grail of prostate cancer treatment, it is a useful tool.

“I think it’s helped us diagnose the cancer earlier, it’s helped us save some lives, but it does have to be used intelligently,” he said.

via:au.news.yahoo.com

In a commentary in The New York Times, Richard Ablin of the University of Arizona said the screening tool he discovered four decades ago now costs too much and is ineffective.

The American Cancer Society, which does not recommend theprostate specific antigen (PSA) test — a standard screening for men since the 1990s — has urged doctors to speak to their patients about its risks and its limits.

Prostate cancer, the second most common cancer in men worldwide after lung cancer, kills an estimated 254,000 men each year.

The new recommendations were based on preliminary results from two major studies — one led in Europe and the other in the United States — published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine journal.

The clinical trials found that the blood test could not be proved to save lives.

PSA does not allow to distinguish between aggressive cancers that require intervention and slow-developing tumors that, depending on the patient’s age, likely will not be a primary cause of death, according to the American Cancer Society….

Furthermore, the test can also provide erroneous results.

As soon as they turn 50 years old, healthy men who bear no symptoms of cancer and are expected to live at least 10 more years should be informed by their doctors of the pros and cons of a PSA screening before deciding to undergo the test, the cancer society recommends.

“For them, the risks likely outweigh the benefits,” it said in a statement.

According to Ablin, American men have a 16 percent chance of being diagnosed with prostate cancer but only a three percent chance of dying from it because most cancers develop slowly over time.

He deplored PSA screenings’ annual cost of at least three billion dollars, much of that paid for by Medicare, the insurance program for the elderly, and the Veterans Administration.

“The test’s popularity has led to a hugely expensive public health disaster,” he wrote in his column.

“As I’ve been trying to make clear for many years now, PSA testing can’t detect prostate cancer and, more important, it can’t distinguish between the two types of prostate cancer — the one that will kill you and the one that won’t.

“Instead, the test simply reveals how much of the prostate antigen a man has in his blood,” he added.

Levels of PSA, a protein produced only prostate cells, can jump when a prostate tumor grows in size. But they can also increase as the prostate enlarges naturally with a patient’s age.

via:news.yahoo.com

Chicago, Illinois (Vocus) March 10, 2010 – Mesothelioma is one of the most severe forms of personal injury a person can endure, as it comes with a great deal of physical, emotional, financial and legal suffering for both the victim and their families.

In an effort to make legal counsel and information more readily available to the public, the leading & National Mesothelioma lawyers of Cooney & Conway have established a mesothelioma answers portal to educate the public. The portal consists of free information on:

•    Lung Cancer
•    Malignant Mesothelioma
•    Causes of Mesothelioma
•    Asbestosis
•    Peritoneal mesothelioma
•    Mesothelioma Lawyer Resource
•    Symptoms of Mesothelioma
•    Mesothelioma Treatment
•    Mesothelioma Prognosis…

The current website of the firm has also been re-engineered to include Web 2.0 features such as the latestsocial media tools to help victims find the information either through search or social networks. Stocked full of information about mesothelioma, auto accidents, catastrophic personal injury, medical malpractice, construction accidents, premises liability and mass tort litigation, the Illinois personal injury law firm of Cooney & Conway hopes their new site will provide a trusted resource for the injured to visit for both education and legal assistance.

The new website displays a simplified, user-friendly navigation, with a detailed menu and a testimonial video that includes actual stories of recovery. Visitors to the new site can learn about the firm by clicking on the “Firm Overview” page or find out detailed information about the partners and associates by clicking on their respective pages.

The new website also offers the latest news in the legal field of personal injury including case law, recent judgments and much more.

About Cooney & Conway
The Illinois personal injury firm of Cooney & Conway is a national leader specializing in mesothelioma, auto accidents, catastrophic personal injury, medical malpractice, construction accidents, premises liability and mass tort litigation. They have represented seriously injured people and their families for over 50 years.

If you or someone you love has been told that they suffer from terminal cancer that may be related toasbestos exposure, or have been seriously injured in a personal injury accident, it is important that you contact the Chicago Injury lawyers of Cooney & Conway now for a free consultation about your case.

Visit the new website at http://mesothelioma.cooneyconway.com/ to fill out a free online case evaluation or call 1-888-651-1850 to speak to someone about your case.

Media Contact:
Kevin Conway
888-651-1850

###

National Mesothelioma lawyers of Cooney & Conway
Kevin Conway
888-651-1850

Via:news.yahoo.com

June Hancock lived in the shadow of the J W Roberts asbestos factory at Armley.

For decades it spewed asbestos dust over the community. It closed in the 1950s, but more than 50 years later its activities are still causing deaths.

Mrs Hancock’s mother died of mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lung caused by asbestos. Mrs Hancock then contracted the disease in 1994 and sued the factory’s owners Turner Newall.

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The disease usually kills within 12 to 18 months of diagnosis.

Despite delays by the company’s lawyers Mrs Hancock lived long enough to win her case, opening the doors to compensation for hundreds of victims. She died in 1997. The June Hancock Mesothelioma Research Fund was established in her memory.

The British Lung Foundation is working with the fund to support new research which could lead to better treatments.

Dr Stefan Marciniak, who heads a research group at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded a two-year grant worth £118,839 for research into mesothelioma….

Through his research he hopes to gain a better understanding of why the cancer progresses. This will help scientists to create new ways of combating the disease.

Dr Marciniak said: “I am thrilled to be awarded the June Hancock Mesothelioma Research Fund grant by the British Lung Foundation.

“As a chest physician I treat patients with pleural disease. I hope to be able to take my findings out of the laboratory to improve the treatments available to my patients .”

Noemi Eiser, honorary medical director for the British Lung Foundation, said: “Someone dies from mesothelioma in the UK every five hours. This study could really make a difference.”

Kate Hill, spokeswoman for the fund, said: “The June Hancock Mesothelioma Research Fund is committed to supporting research that will find new ways to provide real benefits for patients.

via:yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/