Other Cancer Types

OTHER CANCER TYPES

The address of this page is www.bestcancersites.com/othercancertypes

If the cancer type you are searching for does not appear in the list on the home page of this website, here are some websites where you may find valuable information.

The first website to visit is the site of the National Cancer Institute (USA) at www.cancer.gov. They have authoritative and easy to read and understand information on numerous types of cancer. If you go to their home page and click on the link "A to Z List of Cancers" (under the heading "All Cancer Types") you may find the cancer type you are looking for in the alphabetical list. You could also try putting the name of the cancer into the search window on the home page. That may find some information about the cancer in documents on more common cancers.

The American Cancer Society, a voluntary organisation, runs one of the most comprehensive websites on cancer and cancer-related matters on the net. Their address is www.cancer.org. They have information on many types of cancer. On their home page, click on the link "Choose a cancer topic" and search for the relevant cancer in the alphabetical list that displays. They have many other resources too for those involved with cancer so it's well worth browsing their site for additional information and support that may be relevant to your situation.

NORD - the National Organisation for Rare Disorders - on their website at www.rarediseases.org has a database of rare disorders including many rare cancers. The database gives a list of alternative names for each disorder, some basic information about the disorder, and a list of organisations related to that disorder.

A good source of information about cancers and related matters is Medlineplus at www.medlineplus.gov. It's a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Health and it’s a big well-organised and easily searchable site. The link to the section on cancers is www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/cancers.html and there's an index to contents on that page where you may find topics relevant to your search.

I recommend the website Breastcancer.org at www.breastcancer.org as one of the best sources of information and guidance for anyone on the journey from diagnosis to life beyond treatment, no matter which kind of cancer a person has. There are well written and up to date articles on many aspects of cancer which are relevant to any kind of cancer and not just to breast cancer. They also have very active forums where you can read about and learn from the experiences of many other people on all manner of things relating to the cancer journey that you may find valuable.

CancerBACUP at www.cancerbacup.org.uk is a website with a European and United Kingdom perspective. "Welcome to CancerBACUP, Europe's leading cancer information service, with over 4,500 pages of up-to-date cancer information, practical advice and support for cancer patients, their families and carers."

The Rare Cancer Alliance website at www.rare-cancer.org provides information about some rare cancers and has some on-site forums and Yahoo email support groups. They don't give links to rare cancer websites or to rare cancer support groups other than their own.

Mailing lists can provide a good way of getting in touch with others involved with cancers and for sharing information and support. The Association of Cancer Online Resources (ACOR) hosts many mailing lists. To search through their index of lists to look for any that may be relevant to your situation, go to their home page at www.acor.org and click on 'Mailing Lists Center' near the top of the page.

Other websites you may find valuable

Cancercare is a large USA-based organisation "that provides free, professional support services for anyone affected by cancer." On their website at www.cancercare.org you can find some information resources, advice on such matters as financial assistance, and counseling services (online, telephone and face-to-face). There are also some online support groups or forums.

The website RxList at www.rxlist.com - self-described as “The Internet Drug Index providing fast, reliable information to both the consumer and the medical professional” - has information about hundreds of medicinal drugs and also active forums or discussion boards on the more popular drugs as well as forums for discussing less popular drugs and alternative therapies. The link to their forums index page is www.rxlist.com/rxboard.htm.

If you have concerns about fertility in relation to cancer and its treatment, go to this page www.bestcancersites.com/fertility for links to websites with information and support on fertility issues (and you can use your back button to return to this page).

There are links to lymphedema websites on this page www.bestcancersites.com/lymphedema (and you can use your back button to return here).

A good website for finding clinical trials relating to any type of cancer is the USA Government’s National Cancer Institute site at www.cancer.gov - go to their home page and click on the link Clinical Trials, or click on this direct link www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials.

There’s another USA Government website called ClinicalTrials.gov at www.clinicaltrials.gov where you can search for trials. “ClinicalTrials.gov offers up-to-date information for locating federally and privately supported clinical trials for a wide range of diseases and conditions” and “ClinicalTrials.gov currently contains approximately 12,600 clinical studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, other federal agencies, and private industry. Studies listed in the database are conducted in all 50 States and in over 100 countries. ClinicalTrials.gov receives over 4 million page views per month and hosts approximately 17,000 visitors daily.”

I suggest starting your search for clinical trials with the National Cancer Institute site at www.cancer.gov and then trying the ClinicalTrials.gov site. I don't know if ClinicalTrials.gov includes the same database as the NCI site but it doesn’t use the same search form so it might turn up something different anyway. Both sites include trials around the world as well as those in the USA.

You could also try the “American Cancer Society /EmergingMed Clinical Trials Matching Service ... This free Clinical Trial Matching and Referral Service is made available to American Cancer Society visitors through a collaboration with EmergingMed. ... Fill out one questionnaire and within seconds you'll know if your profile matches any clinical trials in our system. The EmergingMed database contains more than 3,000 clinical trials for treatment, prevention and early detection of cancer.” Look for the link to clinical trials on the home page of the American Cancer Society or try this direct link http://clinicaltrials.cancer.org .

For anyone considering trying an alternative treatment for cancer (one that is not mainstream medicine and scientifically demonstrated to be safe and beneficial) the website Quackwatch has a very good section on their site called “A Special Message for Cancer Patients Seeking "Alternative" Treatments”. It will help you decide whether an alternative treatment you are considering is safe and might be beneficial in some way, or whether it might be unsafe and/or fraudulent. The direct link is www.quackwatch.org/00AboutQuackwatch/altseek.html or you can find the link on their home page at www.quackwatch.org.

The American Cancer Society website has a valuable section called "Complementary and Alternative Therapies". It's buried deep in their website and difficult to find - there's no link to it from their home page. Try this direct link www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/ETO_5.asp?sitearea=ETO or else put the word alternative into the search window on the home page and look for a link to the section in the search results. If you're thinking of trying a specific alternative or complimentary treatment you've come across on the internet or elsewhere you may find information about it in this section.

Another website that discusses the subject of alternative treatments in some detail is the website of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at www.nccam.nih.gov.

The American Cancer Society has a very good information page giving advice on how to use the internet for finding information on cancer, and how to determine if that information is reliable. The direct link to it is Cancer Information on the Internet.