liferaftgroup's Podcast

Cancer is the name of that disease which makes anyone shiver and the on the worst if it diagnosed on the last stage as it cannot be cured. Primary peritoneal cancer prognosis is also not good but still it can be cured. They are usually diagnosed when a person goes for some other diseases problem. Gastro intestinal stromal tumors or GIST in short is one such disease which is diagnosed when a person goes for an abdominal pain. It is usually found at 3rd or 4th stage.

The good news for these disease patients is that it can now be cured with a protein inhibitor called gleevec. Gist cancer did not responded to surgery, radiation or chemotherapy has given a positive response to gleevec. It is usually the first line of defense that attacks the tumor and shrinks it. Its success rate in case of gist is 70%, which is very rare in other cancers.

So if any one of who is suffering from gist and now doesn’t need to worry, as with some early awareness, it can be cured. Other than medicines and treatments, what patients required is good family and friends support to fight with this deadly disease and so there are gist support groups, where they help people to come up with their tension and boost morale to live healthily and happily!!

There are many diseases that may happen to humans which are curable yet painful. The pain and trauma that one suffers while going through the medication of such diseases is immeasurable for commoners like us. The patients go through physical as well as mental ordeals when dealing with such problems. One of such major life altering diseases is Cancer. Cancer by itself is of many types and one of the less harmful types of cancer is GIST cancer. By saying that it is less harmful, we do not mean that it can be ignored. It just means that you have a lot of time to fight it and there are sufficient amount of cures available for it.

Gastro intestinal Stromal Tumours i.e. GIST belongs to the soft tissue group cancer called sarcomas. Sarcomas occur in connective tissues like bones, joints, muscles, fats, cartilage etc. Most of the cancer that develops inside a human body is generally due to the special type of cells called epithelial cells. But the problem with GIST Cancer is that it is developed due to another category of cancer producing cells called mesenchymal cells. Since there is a rare occurrence of this situation, there has been a limited amount of study done in this regard and there are only a very few oncologists who specialize in treating GIST. Gist has a natural tendency to navigate from the position that it originates in. Hence it is very difficult at times to identify the location and entity of Gist. Sometimes such cases occur where the GIST got transported to the liver. On diagnosis there was a tumour revealed in the liver and treatment was prescribed for liver tumour when actually it was a GIST. Therefore, timely recognition and cure of GIST is very important.

There are various organizations that help the people suffering from GIST cancer to cope with the disease. Basically in such cases the affected people are seen to get cut-off from their normal lifestyles and gradually all they have is isolation which makes their treatment even more difficult. Therefore, the contribution of such institutions like Life Raft Group is considered very generous. Such organizations make life better for patients. They make sure that the patients do not feel isolated and try to keep them occupied to a very large extent.

Apart from such humane activities, they also look into the fact that the treatment procedure of patients suffering from GIST Cancer is also done properly. Majorly, a five step process is followed. Initially, the entire material available for treating this disease is collected and is provided to all the people who need it. They also speak on the behalf of the patients in the matters of economic and medical well being. The best part of such institutions is that they follow a completely transparent system of funding and development. They do not hide any kind of funds that they have received from varied sources. They bear accountability for their actions. Overall, what they do is a noble deed and the present society needs more of such kind of people.

When we hear the word GIST, we really get blank as if what it is, and next if we got to know that it is a kind of deadly cancer than we get shocked. GIST is a type of cancer that often grows quite large before they are discovered and small tumors often produce few symptoms. The patients who suffer from this disease is likely to have trouble swallowing, gastrointestinal hemorrhage or metastases, than due to tumor’s outward pattern of growth, intestinal obstruction is rare. GIST is diagnosed with the help of blood test and CT scanning.

GISTs were previously thought to arise from smooth muscle cells of the GI tract. The discovery that GISTs express the KIT protein helped establish that GISTs do not originate from smooth muscle. The current thinking is that GIST tumors arise either from stem cells that differentiate towards interstitial cells of cajal or directly from Interstitial Cells of Cajal (ICCs). Surgery is the most common method of curing GIST cancer. Lymph node metastases are rare, and routine removal of lymph nodes is typically not necessary. Laparoscopic surgery, a minimally invasive abdominal surgery using telescopes and specialized instruments, has been shown to be effective for removal of these tumors without needing large incisions.