The nurse is educating adolescents on the best ways to reduce cancer risks. Which of the following factors should be included?

Explanation

• This question is asking what the nurse would teach the adolescents about preventative and educative measures to reduce risk, not about how to treat advanced cancer. Remember, the group being taught is teenagers, not other professionals or a group already diagnosed.

• It is estimated that 50% of cancers are preventable. Prevention strategies include modifying lifestyle and environmental risk factors. Education promotes self-care and behavior modification as the client is made aware of the harmful or the beneficial consequences of lifestyle behaviors.

• Regulation includes prohibiting the sale of tobacco and alcohol to minors, limiting smoking in public places, regulating the use of manufactured carcinogens such as asbestos, and prohibiting carcinogens in foods.

• Screening detects abnormalities before they are clinically apparent, allowing for intervention before cancer develops or at an early stage when treatment is most often effective.

• Incorrect: Bone marrow transplantation is used as a primary treatment in leukemia and may be effective in countering the toxic effects of chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

• Incorrect: Radiation therapy may be used as primary, adjuvant, or palliative treatment for cancer.

• Incorrect: Chemotherapy is a systemic intervention and is appropriate when disease is already widespread, the risk of undetectable disease is high, and the tumor cannot be resected and is resistant to radiation therapy.

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