GapMinder is a nonprofit based out of Sweden and was acquired by Google recently. Its main spokes person has been Professor Hans Rosling who has been able to demonstrate the beauty of GapMinder in looking at statistics to tell us about the past, present and future.

Although some of the data can be sparse, we wanted to take a minute and compare the GDP (wealth) of a country to the cancer deaths per 100,000 women. We looked at five cancers: cervical, breast, colon/rectum, liver and lung.

Quick analysis: the interesting part is that you can  see which diseases have a higher burden in different parts of the world. Cervical cancer appears to have a greater death rate in developing countries (here an HPV vaccine would be most beneficial). Then you have diseases such as breast and lung cancer which has similar death rates across all countries. Finally, you have diseases such as colon, rectum and lung cancers which appear to affect more developed countries.

Hope you enjoy-

Yellow = Americas (large bubble is the US)

Dark blue = Africa

Green = Middle East & North Africa

Orange = Eurasia

Red = Southeast Asia & Australia (large bubble is China)

Light Blue = South Asia (large bubble is India)

*size of the bubble represents country population

Cervical Cancer

According to GLOBOCAN 2002, an international World Health Organization database, there were 381,033 cases of cervical cancer world wide per year.

Breast Cancer

According to GLOBOCAN, there were 1,060,042 cases of breast cancer world wide per year.

Liver

According to GLOBOCAN, there were 46,521 cancer of liver cancer world wide per year.

Colon & Rectum

According to GLOBOCAN, there were 36,2911 cancer of colon and rectum cancer world wide per year.

Lung

According to GLOBOCAN, there were 162,377 cases of lung cancer world wide per year.

We were trying to play around with a few different ways of looking at cancer. After reading a highlight in the Harvard Business Review on data visualization by Jeff Clark at Neoformix (http://neoformix.com/), we thought we give it a go.

First is a stream graph. We thought we check out to see how #cancer performs and its frequency found as a search term for the last 1,000 tweets.

Next was a Twitter Spectrum. As Berinato from HBR describes, it compares two search terms and shows which words are associated with each term and which words are most commonly used in tweets with both terms. Here we used #cancer and #breast.

Finally, we looked at the TwitterVenn. This Venn diagram looks at the frequency of use of each term and frequency of overlap of the terms in a single tweet. We compared the top killers of adolescent and young adults: #cancer, #heartdisease and #suicide.

Alex (part 3):

If you could travel to anywhere in the world, where would that be and why?: “I travel for a living, so there haven’t been many places I wanted to go and haven’t already. I would say Sardinia. It’s an island off the coast of Italy. It’s very nice and relaxing.” – Alex

Four years ago, Alex was involved in a serious car accident, after which he saw a pain management doctor. With time, Alex continued to experience pain, which prompted his pain management doctor to suggest a full body CT scan to check for any non-visible abnormalities. The CT scan revealed a nodule in Alex’s right lung, and he was referred to an oncologist. The initial biopsy of the tumor was inconclusive as to whether the tumor was malignant or benign, and it was three months later that Alex had the lower right side of his lung removed. After several biopsies and CT and PET scans, it was finally determined that Alex had Adenocarcinoma, a cancer that originates from glandular tissue. Alex was a non-smoker and did not surround himself with second hand smoke, and so his diagnosis came to him as a surprise.

Following his lobectomy, the removal of a lobe of his lung, Alex experienced physical changes such as lower energy levels and difficulty breathing. He had to take time off from work, which required much traveling and would therefore take a toll on his body. Luckily for Alex, he did not have many issues with receiving insurance and maintaining his coverage while away from work.

Like many other young adults diagnosed with cancer, Alex found that the majority of cancer patients he encountered at the hospital to be elderly patients, and that there were few people who understood the idea of being young and supposedly healthy and then being diagnosed with cancer. Alex sought out SeventyK, which supports adolescent and young adult cancer patients, in hopes of meeting and speaking with other young adult cancer survivors. It is also Alex’s hope that SeventyK spread the word and inform the public that there are adolescents and young adults (AYA) battling cancer that need support from family, friends, physicians, and other health care professionals. Through personal experience, Alex dealt with his cancer diagnosis through the support of his family and not much from his friends.

In the end, Alex said that were it not for the car accident, he might not have discovered his tumor until much later. He feels very lucky to be alive today.

SeventyK’s take and its Bill of Rights:

Alex, like countless of other AYA cancer patients, did not have adequate psychosocial support from other cancer patients, friends, or family of the same generation or age range, from 15 to 39 years of age. SeventyK’s 7^th Right wants to ensure that AYA patients have the help and resources to receive the necessary psychosocial support during and after the patients’ treatment of cancer. Contrary to what many may believe, the battle with cancer lasts long after the cancer has been removed and treated, and for some patients, it is after the completion of their cancer treatment that the most psychosocial support is needed.

Written by Stacy Tsai

Posted by Stacy Tsai

It was all coming too fast. Three weeks ago J had gone to her GP (General Practitioner) to complain about the swelling of her arm that had not subsided. She had recently graduated from Yale—at the top of her class—and was preparing to go to Harvard Law School. She was home for the summer living with her parents in New York. J had two younger brothers and a young sister in London. The only thing that mattered to her was her post-graduation trip to sunny California. It was when J had been packing and had gone to reach for her shirt on the top of the dresser that the chair she was standing on lost its grip and J fell a couple feet to the ground, landing on her arm. As she only had some swelling and slight pain, her GP simply recommended to ice it and she would be fine.

When as young adults we complain of a problem to a GP we are not always taken seriously, which can result in late diagnosis or misdiagnosis. In fact, there are many explanations for late diagnosis and according to Dr. Archie Bleyer, these include delaying to seek medical care and obtaining a correct diagnosis, lack of routine medical care, poor training or an unwillingness to care for young adults among GPs, under-recognition by medical professionals of certain diseases or its symptoms and signs in J’s age group, and lack of health insurance (US).

J’s persistence to meet with her GP and to tell him that her swelling and pain around her right arm was not a result of her fall saved her life. J actually had osteosarcoma, one of the most common bone cancers in adolescents and young adults. The treatment for it calls for a combination of chemotherapy followed up with a surgery to remove the tumour and follow up chemotherapy to improve any chances for removing the cancer cells. Generally, radiation is only used when surgery is impossible. If J had waited any longer, the chances of metastasis of the tumour would have increased, most likely going to her lungs. Although the causes are unknown, the symptoms of osteosarcoma include tenderness, swelling and pain when lifting. All these are common symptoms usually also experienced after a fall so it can be seen how J’s GP could have overlooked a serious bone cancer for just a slight irritation. Yet, are GPs doing everything they can? to be continued…

By Ali Ansary, SeventyK Co-Founder

From an excellent article by Thomas Goetz posted in Wired Magazine this month: