Letter to the Editor

Join in our efforts to promote Carcinoid Cancer awareness and write to your local paper. Contact me for some tips and let me know if you are published so I can post it here. The following letter to the editor (with the exception of the first paragraph that was cut by the editor) was published on April 19, 2005 in the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

"Obscure" is the term Chris Torres (If It's Tuesday, 2/12/05) might use to describe carcinoid cancer, and he would be accurate. For that reason the Pennsylvania Carcinoid Cancer Advocacy Network (PCCAN) is working with Dr. Harold A. Harvey of Hershey Medical Center and Rep. John Perzel, to promote Carcinoid Awareness Month in May.

Carcinoid Cancer is rare – largely because it is under diagnosed. Carcinoid is a relatively slow-growing neuroendocrine cancer that is often misdiagnosed because its symptoms (flushing, wheezing, diarrhea, or abdominal pain) mimic other conditions (menopause, rosacea, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, reflux, or asthma).

To be cured it must be caught early and treated aggressively. Sadly, the medical community is often unaware of the major advances of the past decade in diagnosing and treating carcinoid cancer.

About 5,000 carcinoid tumors are diagnosed each year according to the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation. Dr. Irvine Modlin of Yale Institute of Medicine believes 90%
of carcinoid tumors are undiagnosed! (Dallas Morning News, March 21, 2005)

Is carcinoid cancer obscure? Maybe. But it is not as rare as many are led to believe.

PCCAN wants the next generation of carcinoid cancer patients to have an easier road with earlier diagnosis, appropriate treatment and better monitoring. We want fewer families to experience the suffering of family members and the separation from a loved one due to a premature death from carcinoid cancer.

Many cases are detected with simple blood and urine tests. Go to http://www.carcinoid.org/ for more information and contact your local support group http://www.pccan.net/ for guidance.

Teresa Lanza
Harrisburg, PA