Best Post of October 2016: Brain Cancer Surpasses Leukemia as #1 Pediatric Cancer Killer

The next in our "Best of the Month" series comes from October 18, 2016:

The following post appeared on the Johns Hopkins Neuropathology Blog last month. The author is Andrew Black:

New data from the CDC shows the mortality rates for pediatric cancers is in decline. A study published by the CDC found that during 1999–2014, the cancer death rate for patients aged 1–19 years in the United States dropped 20%. What is also changing are the type of patients dying. In 1999, leukemia was the leading killer of childhood cancer. That has been replaced by brain cancer. Numerous other trends were also observed in the study.

In both 1999 and 2014, more than one ­half of all cancer deaths among children and adolescents 1­-19 years old were attributable to either leukemia or brain cancer. 3 out of 10 cancer deaths among children and adolescents aged 1–19 years in 1999 were due to leukemia (29.7%), and 1 in 4 were due to brain cancer (23.7%). By 2014, these percentages reversed and brain cancer was the most common site, accounting for 29.9% of total cancer deaths.

Brain Cancer Surpasses Leukemia as #1 Pediatric Cancer Killer

The following post appeared on the Johns Hopkins Neuropathology Blog last month. The author is Andrew Black:

New data from the CDC shows the mortality rates for pediatric cancers is in decline. A study published by the CDC found that during 1999–2014, the cancer death rate for patients aged 1–19 years in the United States dropped 20%. What is also changing are the type of patients dying. In 1999, leukemia was the leading killer of childhood cancer. That has been replaced by brain cancer. Numerous other trends were also observed in the study.

In both 1999 and 2014, more than one ­half of all cancer deaths among children and adolescents 1­-19 years old were attributable to either leukemia or brain cancer. 3 out of 10 cancer deaths among children and adolescents aged 1–19 years in 1999 were due to leukemia (29.7%), and 1 in 4 were due to brain cancer (23.7%). By 2014, these percentages reversed and brain cancer was the most common site, accounting for 29.9% of total cancer deaths.

Best Post of December 2013: What Happened to Neuropathology in 1946

The next in our 'Best of the Month' series is from December 3, 2013. Since posting, three readers posted comments speculating as to what indeed did happen to neuropathology in 1946. See comments after the post below:

What happened to neuropathology in 1946?

The esteemed Dr. Jim Mandell and his son were recently playing with the amazing Google Books Ngram Viewer. Google Ngram searches a huge corpus of books for the mention of a particular search term. It then graphs the frequency with which that term appears over time. On a whim, the Mandell's entered the search term "neuropathologist". Here's the resulting graph:

I couldn't fit the y-axis label in the picture, but it ranges from 0% up to 0.00000300%. Dr. Mandell challenges his neuropathology colleagues to explain the sharp spike in the usage of "neuropathologist" around 1946-47. Please enter your speculations in the comment section. Dr. Mandell also points out the lamentable fact that it "appears we are past our peak".
______________

Gabrielle Yeaney said...

Not sure if I'm on to something but ...in 1946--certification in pathology was formally recognized, CAP was founded and in 1947--first stereotactic neurosurgical procedure performed. In the early 1940s, AMA recognized pathology as practice of medicine (1943);first neurosurgical training programs and American board of Neurological surgery established. Bernd Scheithauer was born in 1946. Maybe he started publishing at a very early age :) Thanks for the blog

jd said...

JNEN began in 1942.

shipcolldoc said...

It is likely just because WW II was over and a lot of medicine-related terminology other than war trauma would have come to the fore.

Anosognosia

Anosognosia -  Real or feigned ignorance of the presence of disease, especially of paralysis.

What happened to neuropathology in 1946?

The esteemed Dr. Jim Mandell and his son were recently playing with the amazing Google Books Ngram Viewer. Google Ngram searches a huge corpus of books for the mention of a particular search term. It then graphs the frequency with which that term appears over time. On a whim, the Mandell's entered the search term "neuropathologist". Here's the resulting graph:

I couldn't fit the y-axis label in the picture, but it ranges from 0% up to 0.00000300%. Dr. Mandell challenges his neuropathology colleagues to explain the sharp spike in the usage of "neuropathologist" around 1946-47. Please enter your speculations in the comment section. Dr. Mandell also points out the lamentable fact that it "appears we are past our peak".

How we're doin'

I just checked the stats on Neuropathology Blog just to see where we stand. Here's where we stand at the moment:

So far today:
Number of pageviews: 291

Entire history since blog's inception in October of 2011:
Blog posts: 364
Comments: 746
Pageviews total: 189,440


Not too bad!

Estimated new central nervous system cancer cases in 2009

The American Cancer Society's recently published Cancer Facts and Figures 2009 reports that there will be 22,070 new brain and other nervous system cancers in the United States this year. That's 260 more cases than estimated for last year.

If the brain were a hard disk

According to Prof. Jeff Lichtman (pictured) of Harvard's Center for Brain Science, the data storage capacity of the human brain is 1 million petabytes. A petabyte is equal to 1000 terabytes; and a terabyte is equal to 1000 gigabytes. In other words, the human brain has storage equivalent to 1000 billion gigabytes of information. So, why can't I remember where I put my car keys?

Estimated US brain cancer cases in 2008

The American Cancer Society recently put out a publication entitled Cancer Facts and Figures 2008 in which it is reported that there will be 21,810 new brain and other nervous system cancers in the United States in 2008. Compare that to the estimated number of new lung and bronchus cancers: 215,020.

Brain Factoid

"The average adult brain weight of a human is 1300-1400 g; an adult gorilla's brain weighs only 500 g."

- From Dan Brat's introductory chapter in Prayson's Neuropathology (2005). By the way, it is rumored that Prayson has agreed with the publisher (Elsevier) to come out with a second edition of this book, perhaps sometime in 2010.