Cancer

In modern society cancer is the disease most feared by the majority of people throughout the world, supplanting the "white death" or
The study of cancer is known as the field of oncology. In the early 1990s nearly 6 million new cancer cases and more than 4 million deaths from cancer were being reported worldwide each year. The leading fatal cancer in the world is lung cancer, which has risen rapidly because of the spread of cigarette smoking in developing countries. Stomach cancer, prevalent in Asia, is the second most fatal form of cancer in men, after lung cancer. Also on the increase is the leading killer of women, breast cancer. The fourth on the list is colon or rectum cancer, a disease that mainly strikes the elderly. In the United States in the early 1990s more than one-fifth of all deaths were caused by
In 1993 the American Cancer Society predicted that about 33 percent of Americans will eventually develop some form of the disease. Skin cancer is the most prevalent cancer in both men and women, followed by prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women. Lung cancer, however, causes the most deaths in both men and women.
Because minor injuries often occur, the clotting process is almost constantly taking place somewhere in the
Blood Transfusions
Transfusions involve the intravenous administration of blood from a donor to a patient. The procedure's safety and effectiveness relates, in large measure, to careful donor selection and to pre-transfusion testing.
There is no true artificial substitute for blood. Some experimental solutions can transport oxygen to the tissues temporarily, and synthetic plasma substitutes are used to raise Anemia is a deficiency of
In some persons, the concentration of red cells and of hemoglobin in the blood may be abnormally increased, rather than decreased, resulting in polycythemia. This is usually caused by an increased production of red cells, but in some persons it may be caused by a decreased volume of
Neutropenia
Deficiency of circulating granulocytes with poor resistance to infection, may occur in many diseases. One common cause is the use of X rays and toxic drugs to treat many malignant diseases.

Leukemia
A great increase in abnormal leukecytes may occur for unknown reasons, resulting in the diseases known as the leukemias. These range from the
Thrombocytopenia
The number of platelets can severely decrease, with danger of bleeding. Perhaps the most common cause of platelet deficiency, or thrombocytopenia, is an autoimmune disease related to autoimmune hemolytic anemia. The difference is that, in these cases, the body produces antibodies that attack only the platelets.

Hemophilia
Deficiencies of one or more of the plasma coagulation factors may also cause
Thromboembolic Diseases
Abnormal clotting in the blood vessels, known as thromboembolic disease, may be caused by an excess of one or more of the plasma clothing factors, or at times to a deficiency of one of the fibrinolytic factors. This group of disorders is one of the most common causes of death in middle aged and elderly persons.