Men still hit obstacles at every stage of cancer care – from prevention and early detection through treatment and life afterwards.
Many are raised to tough things out and avoid asking for help. Add in the embarrassment of discussing intimate symptoms, a health system that’s often difficult to figure out, and care that’s scattered across different places – and it’s no surprise many men struggle to look after themselves or get the support they need.
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“Tell your family” sounds straightforward. But in practice, it’s usually a bit more complicated…..
We don’t talk nearly enough about WHO is responsible for sharing genetic test results with family members.
While one person may undergo genetic testing, this information affects the entire family.
How we communicate that information matters.
This responsibility usually falls on the proband (the person who undergoes genetic testing first). But every family is different.
🔸 What if you’re still trying to process the result yourself?
🔸 What if you’re estranged from the person who needs to know?
🔸 What if someone else in the family is closer to the person you need to share with?
Primary burden: Patients are generally expected to pass on health and risk details to at-risk relatives.
Healthcare provider assistance: Doctors and genetic counsellors frequently supply family communication letters or record copies to make sharing easier.
Even at the best of times, family dynamics can be tricky (and not just around the holidays!). Now throw in the decision to have genetic testing, receiving powerful results, and having the responsibility of relaying those results to your family members. You guessed it – it can get complicated. The issues that can come up when sharing genetic test results have the potential to throw off any family. And with good reason: genetic test results are intensely personal. These results can change everything, as you probably already know.
Some suggestions I came across…
- Call or meet face-to-face: If you have a close relationship with a family member, this might be a good option
- Send a letter or email, consider social media: If you’re not as close with a family member, this could work. Your doctor or genetic counselor might even have examples to use, or be able to help you write this. Social media can be an effective way to consider contacting relatives, particularly if you use direct messages (instead of public posts).
- Give them what they need: Your exact test result, with the gene and any mutation(s) found, is what relatives need if they want to do their own testing.
- Be supportive, but not pushy: Your relative may be hearing this information for the first time, which can be challenging
- Give them space: Time may help them digest the details
- Offer to be available and share resources: They might need your help to answer questions, or just to listen.
- Don’t expect them to do what you did: Even though they may support your decision to have testing, they may not want it themselves – and this is ok, because everyone is different
Life After Cancer Treatment
Cancer survivorship can involve long-term physical, emotional, and financial challenges. Finishing treatment does not always mean that its effects end.
- Late physical effects: Fatigue, nerve damage (neuropathy), cognitive difficulties (“chemobrain”), heart or lung problems, hormonal changes, chronic pain, lymphedema, and physical changes from surgery can persist for years.
- Emotional impact: Survivors may experience fear of recurrence, anxiety around scans (“scanxiety”), changes in their outlook on life, survivor guilt, isolation, or PTSD-like symptoms.
- The “survivorship cliff”: After intensive treatment ends, contact with healthcare teams often decreases dramatically. This can create feelings of vulnerability or abandonment, while ongoing medical care and costs can lead to financial strain.
- Finding a “new normal”: Recovery is often about adapting rather than returning completely to life before cancer. Survivorship care plans, multidisciplinary healthcare, and peer-support groups can help address physical and emotional needs.
- Overall message: Cancer survivorship is highly individual. Modern cancer care increasingly focuses not just on survival, but also on quality of life and long-term wellbeing.
Urinary and Faecal Amino-Acids as Biomarkers for Colorectal Neoplasia in Lynch Syndrome—A Prospective Longitudinal Study
People with Lynch syndrome have a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer, so they need regular colonoscopies. Although colonoscopy is effective, it is invasive and inconvenient, and some cancers can still develop between examinations.
This study explored whether certain substances called amino acids, measured in stool and urine, could help identify people who have colorectal abnormalities. The researchers studied 150 people with Lynch syndrome who provided stool and/or urine samples before and after their surveillance colonoscopy.
They found that:
- Certain amino acids were present at higher levels in the stool or urine of people with colorectal abnormalities, including cancer, advanced polyps, and other adenomas.
- Stool amino acids detected about 80% of people with relevant abnormalities.
- Urine amino acids detected about 88% of these people and were better at identifying people without abnormalities than stool testing.
- Adding the usual faecal immunochemical test (FIT) to the amino-acid tests did not improve their accuracy.
- After polyps were removed, several amino-acid levels moved closer to those seen in people without abnormalities, suggesting that these markers may reflect the presence of polyps.
Overall, the results suggest that measuring amino acids in stool or urine could eventually provide a less invasive way to help decide when colonoscopy is needed or to monitor people after polyp removal. However, this was an early exploratory study, and the findings need to be confirmed in larger, independent studies before these tests can be used in routine care.
What we measure, we can improve.
Contemporary trials consistently achieve ADRs around 30% (including the recently published CADLY2 trial from Robert Hüneburg), supporting a provisional minimum ADR benchmark of 25% for colonoscopy surveillance in Lynch syndrome carriers with an intact or near-intact colon.
This is not an aspirational target, but a pragmatic starting point to identify underperformance, drive quality improvement, and ultimately test whether better colonoscopy translates into fewer post-colonoscopy CRCs.
Time to benchmark adenoma detection in Lynch syndrome surveillance.
https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/abstract/10.1055/a-2934-4134
Validation is now feasible. The English National Lynch Syndrome Programme provides an ideal platform, combining systematic carrier identification, standardised pathways, and prospective data capture.
It could determine whether ADR, alone or integrated with other indicators, predicts PCCRC in real-world surveillance. Such validation should predefine eligible procedures, account for clustering by patient and endoscopist, examine temporal changes, and evaluate whether improvement in ADR is accompanied by reductions in advanced neoplasia and PCCRC rather than merely increased detection of diminutive lesions over time.
The field should move beyond asking whether colonoscopy “works” in Lynch syndrome and define the measurable conditions under which it most effectively prevents cancer.
Cancer in Ireland 1994-2023
Annual Statistical Report 2026 has just launched.
Cancer outcomes in Ireland show sustained improvement across three decades:
- More than 30 years of NCRI data show sustained improvements in cancer survival and reduced mortality
- Improvements reflect progress in earlier diagnosis, and significant advances in treatment
- Survival rates for some cancers can be as high as 95% five years after diagnosis
- Rising baseline numbers are mostly a factor of a growing and ageing population – not a significant increase in population risk
Colonic Polyp Regression After Nous-209 Cancer Immunotherapy: A Clinical Trial Case Report
https://innovationsjournals-jipo.kglmeridian.com/view/journals/jipo/9/4/article-p124.xml
What was studied: Doctors treated a patient with an experimental cancer vaccine called Nous‑209 along side pembrolizumab, a standard immunotherapy drug that works by “releasing the brakes” on the immune system so it can attack cancer.
Who it was for: The patient had a type of bowel (colorectal) cancer known as “dMMR” — a cancer with faulty DNA repair machinery. These tumours make a lot of abnormal proteins, which makes them easier for the immune system to recognise. This patient also had many benign (non-cancerous) growths, called polyps, in the bowel — some of which could eventually turn into cancer.
What happened:
- The patient’s cancer disappeared completely on clinical assessment (a “complete clinical response”).
- The number of benign polyps dropped substantially — something not clearly seen before with immunotherapy alone.
Why this matters: The vaccine appears to boost the immune system so strongly that it not only attacks the cancer, but also clears away pre-cancerous growths. In theory, this could:
- Lower the chance of the cancer coming back
- Stop new polyps forming
- Offer a form of “immunoprevention” — using the immune system to prevent cancer before it develops
This could be especially valuable for people with dMMR cancers (such as those with Lynch syndrome) and for people with polyposis syndromes, who develop large numbers of polyps and face a high lifetime risk of bowel cancer.
Important caution: These results come from just one patient. A single case cannot prove that the treatment works reliablyor safely for others — it may have been a one-off response. Larger clinical trials and laboratory studies are needed toconfirm the findings and to understand exactly how the treatment produces these effects.
BowelScreen
Free Bowel cancer screening is intended for people without symptoms. FIT looks for blood in a small stool sample and helps identify who may need further investigation.
Ireland: Ages 57-71 – Screening uptake 46%.
UK: Ages 50-74 – Screening uptake 65%
The Emotional Weight of Cancer Screenings and Appointments
Time for yet another appointment.
- Another doctor
- Another screening
- Another test
- More waiting
- More anxiety
- More stress
- More unknown
“Don’t feel weak or weird or think that you shouldn’t be having any feelings thoughts or emotions as you get ready for these appointments as you wait on results that is normal and completely understandable.”
Lynch Syndrome Ireland 