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Showing 14351 - 14400On Radiation and Cancer Risk
We owe our life to radiation. The universe was created in a thermonuclear explosion, and continued existence of life on Earth depends on plants using chlorophyll to capture light energy emitted by the sun (and exploding supernovas) and converting it into chemical energy, with the subsequent...
Study Finds Young Cancer Survivors Often Skip Checkups
Athough the majority of the more than 69,000 adolescents and young adults (AYAs) diagnosed with cancer each year will survive their disease, many of them will experience interruptions in their education and a derailment in their career tract, curtailing their lifetime earning potential and reducing ...
FOLFOXIRI Plus Bevacizumab Is Superior to FOLFIRI Plus Bevacizumab in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer
For the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer, better outcomes were achieved when bevacizumab (Avastin) was added to FOLFOXIRI (leucovorin, fluorouracil [5-FU], oxaliplatin, irinotecan), rather than FOLFIRI (leucovorin, 5-FU, irinotecan), in the phase III TRIBE trial conducted at 35 Italian...
Large Epidemiologic Studies Re-examine Hazards of Smoking
“Smokers lose at least one decade of life expectancy, as compared with those who have never smoked,” and the increased risk of death from cigarettes smoking “are now nearly identical for men and women,” according to two separate studies published online by TheNew England Journal of Medicine. One...
Short Wait for Lab Results Is Reasonable Strategy to Better Characterize AML and Design Therapy
Waiting a short period of time for laboratory results to better characterize acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and design therapeutic approaches is a reasonable strategy, researchers in Toulouse, France, found after a retrospective review of 599 newly diagnosed AML patients treated by induction...
Short-term Survival Advantage of Carrying BRCA Mutation Does Not Extend to Long Term
While carrying a BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 mutation was associated with a better prognosis in the 3-year period after diagnosis of invasive ovarian cancer, this short-term survival advantage did not lead to long-term survival benefit, according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer...
Trametinib Shows Activity in Previously Treated but BRAF Inhibitor–naive BRAF-mutant Melanoma
In a multicenter phase II study, trametinib showed “significant clinical activity” in a cohort of BRAF inhibitor–naive patients with BRAF-mutant cutaneous melanoma previously treated with chemotherapy and/or immunotherapy. Only minimal clinical activity, however, was observed among a cohort of...
Patients with Cancer Need to Know That It Is Never Too Late to Quit Smoking
In the News focuses on media reports that your patients may have questions about at their next visit. This continuing column will provide summaries of articles in the popular press that may prompt such questions, as well as comments from colleagues in the field. Patients with head and neck or lung...
My Life Will Never Be Normal
After being diagnosed with stage II invasive ductal carcinoma in my right breast in 2004, I did an Internet search to learn more about my treatment options so I could be prepared when I met with my oncologist to discuss my treatment plan. I was especially interested in therapies that would be...
Study Shows Little Association of Multidisciplinary Tumor Boards with Measures of Care
A survey of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers recently reported by Nancy L. Keating, MD, MPH, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute showed that the presence of multidisciplinary tumor boards had little association with rates of recommended...
Focus on the Medical Oncology Association of Southern California
For more than 2 decades, the guiding principle of the Medical Oncology Association of Southern California (MOASC) has been to ensure the continuation of the private practice of medical oncology and to provide the highest quality care to cancer patients. Founded in 1990, MOASC is the largest...
Survey Shows Public's Knowledge of Cancer Progress Is Rising, But Myths Persist
People are more optimistic today about their chances of surviving cancer, according to findings from a new international survey commissioned by Lilly Oncology. The phone survey of 4,341 individuals (including people in the general population, cancer survivors, and caregivers) in six countries (the...
Jane Cooke Wright, MD, ASCO Cofounder, Dies at 93
The practice of oncology advances incrementally; each step forward, no matter how painfully small at times, leads to the next. The oncology community readily offers tribute to predecessors in the field who took those first steps into the uncharted regions of cancer care, without which today’s...
Analysis Shows No 10-year Survival Advantage in Patients with Ovarian Cancer and BRCA1 or BRCA2 Mutations
Several studies have suggested that short-term overall survival for women with ovarian cancer and BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations is better than that in patients without such mutations. Indeed, a recent report by Kelly L. Bolton, PhD, and colleagues indicated that 5-year overall survival was 36% for...
Enhanced Electronic Module Aims to Prevent Errors in Oral Chemotherapy Prescribing
An oral chemotherapy prescription-writing module grafted to a shared electronic medical record is part of a series of quality improvement efforts undertaken at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston to prevent errors in prescribing oral chemotherapy agents. While oncologists have readily accepted...
High Infection Rates Found in Multiple Myeloma Patients, With High Mortality
A large Swedish study using population-based data to estimate the risk of bacterial and viral infections among 9,610 patients with multiple myeloma (9,253 eligible for analysis) found that the myeloma patients had a 7-fold risk of developing any infection compared to 34,931 matched controls from...
Preparing for the Next Superstorm: Protecting Patients during Natural Disasters
When Hurricane Sandy slammed into the East Coast last October, the magnitude of devastation it left in its wake exceeded even the most dire predictions. Eighty mile per hour winds and record storm surges destroyed antiquated electrical grids and flooded subway stations, leaving much of New York...
FDA Approves Regorafenib for Advanced Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors
The FDA has expanded the approved use of regorafenib (Stivarga) to treat patients with metastatic or unresectable gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) that no longer respond to treatment with imatinib (Gleevec) or sunitinib (Sutent). Regorafenib, a multikinase inhibitor, blocks several enzymes...
FOXP3 Expression Linked to Better Survival with Adjuvant Anthracycline Not Followed by Taxane in Breast Cancer
The French UNICANCER-PACS 01 trial compared six cycles of anthracycline-based adjuvant therapy with FEC (epirubicin, cyclophosphamide, fluorouracil; FEC6) vs three cycles of FEC followed by three cycles of docetaxel (FEC/docetaxel) in patients with node-positive primary breast cancer. After...
Expert Point of View: Elizabeth Mittendorf, MD
“This study confirms previously published racial disparities in access to care, but factors that drive these disparities have not been elucidated,” stated Elizabeth Mittendorf, MD, Department of Surgical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. The study was...
Black Women Less Likely to Get Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy and More Likely to Have Lymphedema on Axillary Lymph Node Dissection
Although sentinel lymph node biopsy is the recommended method for axillary staging of node-negative breast cancer, racial disparities in access to care were found in a study presented at the 2012 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Black women were 12% less likely than white women with breast...
Expert Point of View: Seema A. Khan, MD
Responding to the results of the ACOSOG Z1071 study, Seema A. Khan, MD, Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, urged caution in adopting the practice of sentinel lymph node surgery after chemotherapy for some patients with breast cancer at this time....
Role of Sentinel Node Surgery Explored in Node-positive Breast Cancer
Sentinel lymph node surgery performed after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in women presenting with node-positive disease could spare many patients with breast cancer needless axillary lymph node dissection, according to a study of the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group presented at the 2012 San ...
21-gene Recurrence Score Does Not Predict Paclitaxel Benefit
The 21-gene recurrence score significantly predicted the risk of recurrence and death in node-positive, estrogen receptor–positive patients treated with adjuvant chemoendocrine therapy, but it did not predict benefit from the addition of paclitaxel to the regimen in a subset of patients from the...
Expert Point of View: Laura J. van ’t Veer, PhD and Andrew Seidman, MD
Laura J. van ’t Veer, PhD, Leader of the Breast Oncology Program at the University of California, San Francisco, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, commented on the findings. “These investigators confirm in a robust meta-analysis that neoadjuvant chemotherapy response is different...
Subsets of Young Patients Have Higher Pathologic Complete Response Rates
In achieving a pathologic complete response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, it seems that age matters, according to a study reported at the 2012 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.1 Patients with breast cancer aged 35 and younger were more likely to achieve a pathologic complete response than their...
No Benefit of Adding Carboplatin to Pemetrexed in Second-line Treatment of Patients With Advanced Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
An Italian randomized phase II study (GOIRC 02-2006 study) recently reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology by Andrea Ardizzoni, MD, of Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria in Parma, Italy, and colleagues showed no progression-free survival benefit of adding carboplatin to pemetrexed (Alimta) in...
Patients Receiving Palliative Radiation Therapy for Metastatic Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer May Be Overtreated
Many patients receiving palliative radiation therapy to the bone or chest for metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) may be receiving a greater number of treatments and higher doses than are supported by current evidence, according to a Cancer Care and Outcomes Research and Surveillance...
Cytarabine in Conditioning Regimen for Younger Patients with MCL
High-dose cytarabine should be incorporated into the induction regimen of younger patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) before autologous stem cell transplantation, according to final results of the MCL Younger Trial of the European Mantle Cell Lymphoma Network, presented at the ASH Annual...
Quizartinib Data Encouraging in Phase II Investigations of FLT3 Mutation–positive Acute Myeloid Leukemia
The investigational oral FLT3 inhibitor quizartinib appears to be a safe and effective treatment for patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML), according to results of a phase II trial presented at the 54th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in...
Expert Point of View: Martin Dreyling, MD
“The BRIGHT study had a noninferiority design, but I question why BR was not found superior, because the StiL trial showed a huge difference in progression-free survival favoring BR,” said Martin Dreyling, MD, Professor at the University of Munich in Germany. “In BRIGHT, BR achieved higher...
Bendamustine/Rituximab Noninferior to Standard Chemotherapy for Advanced Indolent Non-Hodgkin and Mantle Cell Lymphomas
The combination of bendamustine (Treanda) and rituximab (Rituxan), or BR, was found to be noninferior to commonly used chemotherapy with R-CHOP (rituximab plus cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) or R-CVP (rituximab plus cyclophosphamide, vincristine, and prednisone) in...
Pomalidomide in Previously Treated Multiple Myeloma
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. Indication On February 8, 2013, the immunomodulatory agent...
Colorectal Cancer: A Decade of Progress
The 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium marked the 10th anniversary of the meeting. Richard M. Goldberg, MD, the Klotz Family Chair in Cancer Research, Professor of Medicine, and James Cancer Hospital Physician-in-Chief at The Ohio State University, looked back over the decade to highlight the...
Expert Point of View: Johanna C. Bendell, MD
The study’s formal discussant, Johanna C. Bendell, MD, Director of Gastrointestinal Cancer Research and at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, Nashville, said COUGAR02 had “good and appropriate stratification factors” and “importantly, included quality-of-life studies.” This is critical, she said, ...
Targeted Therapy Gaining Ground in the Second-line Treatment of Gastric Cancer
In gastric cancer, the concept of targeted therapy assumed clinical significance when the addition of trastuzumab (Herceptin) to chemotherapy improved survival by almost 3 months in the ToGA trial.1 Another anti-HER2 agent, lapatinib (Tykerb), now looks promising, as does an agent targeting the...
Did Corticosteroids Worsen Survival in Patients with Metastatic Prostate Cancer Enrolled in the AFFIRM Trial?
A post hoc analysis of the AFFIRM trial found that on-study use of corticosteroids led to worse outcomes in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer regardless of whether patients were randomly assigned to enzalutamide (Xtandi) or placebo.1 On-study corticosteroid use was associated with...
Expert Point of View: William Oh, MD
“The durability of PSA response is encouraging [with ARN-509], as is the toxicity data, but these are relatively asymptomatic patients,” said formal discussant William Oh, MD, Chief of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Professor of Medicine and Urology, and the Ezra M. Greenspan, MD, ...
Novel Antiandrogen Shows Encouraging Phase II Results in High-risk Nonmetastatic Castrate-resistant Prostate Cancer
Preliminary results of a phase II study suggest that a novel antiandrogen called ARN-509 is safe, well tolerated, and has promising activity in high-risk nonmetastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer. ARN-509 is a novel, second-generation, oral antiandrogen that binds directly to the...
Expert Point of View: Anthony D’Amico, MD
Now there are mature data from three trials comparing adjuvant radiotherapy vs a wait-and see approach in men following radical prostatectomy, said formal discussant Anthony D’Amico, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. Despite...
Reduced Risk of PSA Failure with Adjuvant Radiotherapy vs Wait-and-see Approach in Stage T3 Prostate Cancer
Extended follow-up of the German ARO 96-02 trial shows that adjuvant radiotherapy reduces the risk of biochemical failure in men whose prostate cancer extends through the prostate capsule (stage T3), compared with a wait-and-see approach, after radical prostatectomy. Adjuvant radiotherapy reduced...
T-DM1 for HER2-positive Metastatic Breast Cancer Receives FDA Approval
The FDA approved the antibodydrug conjugate ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla), referred to as T-DM1 during clinical research, for patients with HER2-positive, metastatic breast cancer who were previously treated with trastuzumab (Herceptin) and taxane chemotherapy. Ado-trastuzumab emtansine was...
Cancer Has Made Me A Better Doctor
After six recurrences of colorectal cancer, the chances it will recur again are high. But if I concentrate on that, I couldn’t live my life. In retrospect, I should have paid attention sooner to the abdominal pain I was experiencing and not dismiss it as a simple case of gas. But at age 47 and with ...
Bevacizumab plus Capecitabine Has Robust Effect in Elderly Patients with Colorectal Cancer
In elderly patients with treatment-naive metastatic colorectal cancer, a trend toward a survival benefit was observed for bevacizumab (Avastin) plus capecitabine (Xeloda) in the international phase III AVEX trial, which was presented at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium by David...
Modified and Updated Risk-prediction Model Is More Efficient in Identifying Persons for Lung Cancer Screening
An updated and modified lung-cancer risk-prediction model developed from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial “was more sensitive” for lung cancer detection than criteria from the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST), according to a study in TheNew...
Two Studies Focus on Treatment Strategies for Preserving the Larynx While Increasing Survival
Two recent studies in the Journal of Clinical Oncology focused on treatment strategies to preserve the larynx while increasing survival of patients with cancer of larynx. RTOG 91-11 Ten-year results from the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) 91-11 trial found that both chemotherapy regimens...
Number of Cancer Survivors Expected to Increase to 18 Million by 2022
The American Association for Cancer Research recently released its second Annual Report on Cancer Survivorship in the United States. The report shows that as of January 2012, there were approximately 13.7 million cancer survivors in the United States, a number that is expected to rise by 31% to 18...
Barrie R. Cassileth, MS, PhD, Champion of Integrative Oncology, Continues to Nurture Growth of the Field
Over the past decade, integrative oncology has gained wide acceptance as an evidenced-based way to improve the lives of patients with cancer throughout the continuum of their care. The ASCO Post recently spoke with Barrie R. Cassileth, MS, PhD, Chief of the Integrative Medicine Service and Laurance ...
Conflicts of Interest
In looking at a recent issue of The ASCO Post, I noted that expert opinions from specialists were published alongside a number of clinical reports. Below each opinion was a disclosure statement, often saying that the expert had no conflict of interest to report. While I do not know each of these...
Another Perspective on Accountable Care Organizations
I read with great interest Dr. Richard Boxer’s editorial on accountable care organizations in the January 15 issue of The ASCO Post. Much of what he says is unfortunately true. There are several points that I would like to make, however. First of all, Dr. Boxer states that the “principle that...
