Tiresias: On Whispering Jack

"We have a chance to turn the pages over"

“You’re The Voice” - sung by John Farnham

Lyrics by Qunta, Reid, Ryder, and Thompson.

My friends,

Today Tiresias would like to address the case of the cancer of John Farnham. You will recall not long ago there was much publicity about John Farnham's heroic surgery which took thirteen hours, involving two surgical teams, with massive radical of the neck and removal of part of the lower jaw and then implanting of a prosthetic new lower jaw to remove metastasised oral cancer. In a better medical world, this didn't have to be so. This could've been done much more easily and with a much better outcome. Tiresias hates to be a naysayer, but unfortunately also even after all this heroic and disfiguring surgery, one of Tiresias’s musical icons still face a poor prognosis, a 60% chance of recurrence of his cancer. Things could've been different at two critical times.

First, how, and why did it come to this? It came to this because a lesion in the mouth was not diagnosed when it became apparent. Tiresias is not privy to the medical records of John Farnham so he will only surmise what he understands would almost certainly have happened. At some stage John Farnham would have had a precancerous lesion in his mouth. He would've either had leucoplakia, a very common and persisting precancerous lesion. The incidence of leucoplakia in the general population is up to 5%. The only way to monitor it at present is repeated biopsies, which as Tiresias’s friends know has many drawbacks which he need not enumerate today. However, if John Farnham had had a regular examination by our in-vivo real time confocal digital microscope, which would have enabled full examination and not just a tiny random sample, the precancer would have been picked up, treated locally, and would have been as easy as burning off a small skin cancer. But this was not available, John Farnham’s precancer became cancer, the cancer spread to his neck into the lymph nodes, and hence the huge commando disfiguring surgery, which may prolong his life, but with huge morbidity, significant mortality, and then a 60% chance of recurrence.

The second opportunity that Optiscan in-vivo, real-time, confocal digital cellular histopathology could've been used, and to major benefit to our hero is in the surgery itself. When the surgeons were dissecting the neck and removing lymph nodes, they may have used frozen section to sample some of the lymph nodes, but that could not tell whether there were cancer cells left behind. However, had they had the Optiscan microscope in surgery, they could have scanned every part of the surgical field, during and at the completion, screening microscopically for malignant cells, and if they were present removing them and dealing with them, and dealing with them in ways that have not even been considered because their presence is undetected. Who could doubt that this would have been of great benefit. There is certainly no doubt in Tiresias’s mind that Optiscan real-time digital pathology could have prevented the need for this massive destructive deforming heroic surgery and then had this become necessary could have made a huge difference to its outcome. But this is just one event story, one outstanding event of something that is happening every day, everywhere around the world which highlights the inadequacy and the shortcomings of current practice. Tiresias wishes John Farnham all the very best for recovery and cure and he invokes and prays to the hero god of medicine Asclepius and his children Hygeia and Panacea to assist in his full recovery and ultimate cure. Tiresias sees the time for Optiscan is here.