Is clustering of concordant and discordant cancer types in Swedish couples rare?
Shared lifestyles including smoking and drinking habits as well as human papilloma virus infection (HPV) might be associated with an excess of cancer incidence amongst spouses. We observed significantly an increased risk for smoking-related cancers such as lung, upper aerodigestive tract and oesophageal cancers. The present population-based study confirms that the lifestyle shared by spouses plays a minor role in cancer causation. Only strong environmental risk factors such as smoking seem to influence cancer development in adulthood. The proposed etiological map based on 24 cancer types identifies novel clusters--for example, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukaemia, bone cancer and myeloma--that are not completely explained by established risk factors. Some of the identified clusters relied on reproduced associations between cancer risks amongst husband and wives; however, the role of chance cannot be excluded.
The contaminated hands of anesthesia providers serve as a significant source of patient environmental and stopcock set contamination in the operating room. Additional sources of intraoperative bacterial transmission, including postoperative environmental cleaning practices, should be further studied.