The common misconception that Pap smear tests can help screen for all gynecological cancers has sometimes led to delayed diagnoses of endometrial cancer, which affects an average of 1,700 women in the nation per year, a gynecologist said yesterday.
“One such patient was a 59-year-old postmenopausal woman, surnamed Kao (高), who shrugged off her symptom of abnormal vaginal bleeding six months ago because all her annual smear tests had come back normal,” Cathay General Hospital gynecologist Chen Ssu-yu (陳思宇) told a press conference in Taipei yesterday afternoon.
Chen said Kao later sought medical attention at a local clinic, where she was diagnosed with atrophic vaginitis, a common cause of vaginal bleeding after menopause that results from an insufficiently lubricated vagina.
After medications failed to assuage her symptoms, Kao went to a large hospital in the city and to her great astonishment, a vaginal sonography and an endometrial biopsy diagnosed her with stage-one endometrial cancer, Chen said.
“Pap smears can only reach as far as the cervix and only rarely do they happen to collect cancer cells falling off the endometrium. One must not rely on smear test to detect endometrial or ovarian cancers,” Chen said.
Chen said that in Taiwan, nearly 1,700 people are diagnosed each year with endometrial cancer, which ranked sixth in gynecological cancer incidence.
Primary risk factors for the cancer include polycystic ovarian syndrome, infertility, childlessness, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, Western-style diet, early menarche and late menopause.
“Also at risk are breast-cancer patients who are on the anti-estrogen drug tamoxifen, which may reduce their chances of breast-cancer recurrence, but increase their risk of endometrial cancer,” Chen said.
Chen advises non-menopausal women to seek immediate medical care should they experience unusually prolonged menstrual periods, short intervals between periods or abnormal vaginal bleeding.
“As for postmenopausal women, they are urged to consult a gynecologist once they notice any vaginal bleeding,” Chen said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching