Question

1. Cancer is an exceptionally important chronic disease to public health. Explain why.

Answer 1

Diseases like cancer are exceptionally important chronic disease to public health as they are a leading cause of death and disaniof the people.

Most chronic cancers cannot be cured, but some can be controlled for months or even years. In fact, there’s always a chance that cancer will go into remission. There are different kinds of remission.

• When a treatment completely gets rid of all tumors that could be measured or seen on a test, it’s called a complete response or complete remission.
• A partial response or partial remission means the cancer partly responded to treatment, but still did not go away. A partial response is most often defined as at least a 50% reduction in measurable tumor. Here, when we refer to a remission it will generally mean a partial remission.

To qualify as either type of remission, the absence of tumor or reduction in the size of the tumor must last for at least one month. There’s no way to tell how long a remission will last, so remission does not mean the cancer definitely has been cured. Some cancers (for example, ovarian), have a natural tendency of recurrence and remission. Often, this repeating cycle of growing, shrinking, and stabilizing can mean survival for many years during which the cancer can be managed as a chronic illness. Treatment can be used to control the cancer, help relieve symptoms, and help you live longer.

Cancer is a major public health concern in the United States (U.S.); it is currently the second leading cause of death among U.S. men and women after heart disease. Cancer has long been a commonly diagnosed disease in the U.S. with over a million new cases diagnosed each year. While age-adjusted rates of cancer have for the most part decreased in recent years, the actual number of cases diagnosed has increased and is projected to continue to increase in future years, mostly due to the aging of the U.S. population. cancer will soon surpass heart disease to become the overall leading cause of death in the U.S.