ABSTRACT
Background: Promoting awareness of tobacco and cancer in the community needs multipronged efforts. We performed a study to evaluate whether we could raise awareness about the harmful effects of tobacco, oral and esophageal cancer among school students by providing them health education. Moreover, we also compared the awareness level in students of age group 12 to ?14 years with the age group >14 to 18 years. Methods: We conducted an awareness program in the schools of Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra state. Students aged 12–18 years participated in this study. We provided health education to school students using a standard presentation; the presentation was rich in illustrations depicting the harmful effects of tobacco as well as oral and esophageal cancer’s signs, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and preventive measures. After the health talk, a questionnaire was circulated. The questions were focused on tobacco, signs, and symptoms of the diseases along with early detection, prevention, and treatment of cancer. Results: A total of 1354 students participated in the program. Totally, 567 (41.9%) students were from 6th to 8th grade (Group A, age group 12 to ?14) and 787 (58.1%) students were from 9th to 12th standards (Group B, age group >14 to 18). Overall scores were high, ranging from 69% to 98%. Group A scored in the range of 69% to 95%, and Group B scored in the range 72%–98% The difference between the two groups was found to be statistically significant (P?value ?0.05). Conclusion: A standardized health education program helped to raise awareness about the harmful effects of tobacco and cancer amongst school children. Further studies are needed to evaluate whether educating school children has an impact on community understanding of the disease.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: To study the utility of fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) in predicting (1) the World Health Organization (WHO) histologic type and differentiating low‑risk from high‑risk types. (2) Tumor stage and differentiate early from advanced stage disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patients with thymic epithelial neoplasia who underwent a pretreatment FDG‑PET study were included. Tumor maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) was correlated with the WHO histologic type and also with the Masaoka‑Koga (MK) staging system. Patients with WHO Type A, AB, and B1 were classified as low risk and those with B2 and B3 as high risk. Thymic carcinomas belonged to Type C. Patients with MK Stage I and II disease were grouped as early stage and those with Stage III and IV as an advanced stage. Differences in SUVmax between the various groups were calculated. RESULTS: The SUVmax of thymic carcinomas was significantly higher as compared to low‑risk (P = 0.001) and high‑risk groups (P = 0.007). The SUVmax of high‑risk group was also significantly higher than the low‑risk group (P = 0.002). SUVmax cutoff of 6.5 was able to differentiate thymic carcinomas from thymomas with 100% sensitivity and 87.2% specificity. The SUVmax in patients with advanced stage disease showed a higher trend compared to those with early stage, but the difference was not significant (P = 0.167). CONCLUSION: PET can differentiate thymic carcinomas from rest of the thymoma subtypes by the virtue of their higher FDG uptake. It can also provide valuable information in differentiating high‑risk from low‑risk thymomas and in predicting disease stage.