Emotional impact (Continued)

Counseling can provide emotional support to cancer patients and help them better understand their illness. Different types of counseling include individual, group, family, peer counseling, bereavement, patient-to-patient, and sexuality.

Many governmental and charitable organizations have been established to help patients cope with cancer. These organizations are often involved in cancer prevention, cancer treatment, and cancer research.

Epidemiology

Cancer
is responsible for about 25% of all deaths in the U.S., and is a major public health problem in many parts of the world. In the U.S., lung cancer causes about 30% of cancer deaths but only about 15% of new cancer cases; the most commonly occurring cancer in men is prostate cancer (about 25% of new cases) and in women is breast cancer (also about 25%). Cancer can also occur in young children and adolescents, but it is rare (about 150 cases per million in the U.S.), with leukemia being the most common. In the first year of life the incidence is about 230 cases per million in the U.S., with the most common being neuroblastoma.

Over a third of cancer deaths worldwide are due to potentially modifiable risk factors, which are headed by tobacco smoking, alcohol use, and diets low in fruit and vegetables. In developed countries overweight and obesity is also a leading cause of cancer, and in low-and-middle-income countries sexual transmission of human papillomavirus is a leading risk factor for cervical cancer.

History

Today, the Greek term carcinoma is the medical term for a malignant tumor derived from epithelial cells. It is Celsus who translated carcinos into the Latin cancer, also meaning crab. Galen used "oncos" to describe all tumours, the root for the modern word oncology.

Hippocrates described several kinds of cancers. He called benign tumours oncos, Greek for swelling, and malignant tumours carcinos, Greek for crab or crayfish. This name comes from the appearance of the cut surface of a solid malignant tumour, with "the veins stretched on all sides as the animal the crab has its feet, whence it derives its name" (see picture). He later added the suffix -oma, Greek for swelling, giving the name carcinoma. Since it was against Greek tradition to open the body, Hippocrates only described and made drawings of outwardly visible tumors on the skin, nose, and breasts. Treatment was based on the humor theory of four bodily fluids (black and yellow bile, blood, and phlegm). According to the patient's humor, treatment consisted of diet, blood-letting, and/or laxatives. Through the centuries it was discovered that cancer could occur anywhere in the body, but humor-theory based treatment remained popular until the 19th century with the discovery of cells.