“Selenium supplementation of 140 or more μg/d after diagnosis of nonmetastatic prostate cancer may increase risk of prostate cancer mortality,” according to a prospective study following 4,459 men initially diagnosed with nonmetastatic prostate cancer in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study...
The likelihood of impending death of patients with advanced cancer “is one of those questions that many people want to know about, but they are too afraid to ask,” David Hui, MD, MSc, said in an interview with The ASCO Post. Dr. Hui is lead author of a study, published in Cancer, on clinical signs...
In a recently published study of patients with advanced cancer whose status was systematically documented twice a day, from the time of admission to a palliative care unit until death or discharge, investigators identified eight physical signs associated with death within 3 days. Taken together...
ASCO Answers: Managing the Cost of Cancer Care explains the various costs associated with cancer treatment, including health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It also provides a list of financial resources available to help offset expenses related to care and tips for organizing...
I had every classic brain tumor symptom in the book—severe headaches, dizziness, morning nausea—which plagued me for 16 years, starting when I was 8. In college, if I allowed myself to sleep more than 4 hours a night, the morning headaches, which were centered on the top of my head, were so severe, ...
The following essay by Eric M. Genden, MD, is adapted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org. There’s...
MARCH Personalised Cancer Medicine and Big Data Analysis – 7th International Conference of Contemporary OncologyMarch 25-27 • Poznań, Poland For more information: www.termedia.pl/Konferencje?Invitation&e=372&p=2787 Society of Surgical Oncology Annual MeetingMarch 25-28 • Houston, Texas For ...
Patricia Ganz, MD, Director of Cancer Prevention and Control Research at the Jonsson Cancer Center of UCLA, and collaborators Apple and Sage Bionetworks, recently announced the launch of “Share the Journey: Mind, Body and Wellness after Breast Cancer,” a patient-centered mobile application (app)...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting observational, interventional, phase I, phase II, and phase III clinical studies for patients with newly diagnosed or recurrent esophageal cancer. All of the studies are listed on the National Institutes...
BookmarkTitle: The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your HandsAuthor: Eric Topol, MDPublisher: Basic BooksPublication date: January 2015Price: $28.99; hardcover, 384 pagesMost books about health care center on fixing broken parts of the massive $3 trillion system, as seen with ...
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), together with the Lymphoma Research Foundation (LRF), CancerCare, the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), and Genentech announced the launch of a new partnership, the Alliance for Resource Collaboration in Hematology (ARCH). ARCH was developed...
Seattle Children’s Hospital announced that the Board of Trustees has named Jeff Sperring, MD, Chief Executive Officer, effective early in May. Dr. Sperring, who currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health, will continue to...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched the agency’s first mobile application (app) specifically designed to speed public access to valuable information about drug shortages. The app identifies current drug shortages, resolved shortages, and discontinuations of drug products....
Joseph Mikhael, MD, MEd, myeloma expert at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, Scottsdale, and Associate Dean of the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education, considers five questions when selecting treatment for patients with multiple myeloma who relapse. “With prolonged survival, which approaches 10...
A variety of studies, including one published this past year in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 have showed that clinicians who care for seriously ill patients are at high risk for diminished personal well-being, including high rates of burnout; moral distress, defined as the inability to act in ...
While commending the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for seeking new approaches to physician payment, ASCO expressed concerns over the model’s limited scope. “We are disappointed [CMS has] chosen to pursue only one model—and one that continues to rely on a broken fee-for-service...
On February 12, 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced its new Oncology Care Model, a multipayer payment and care delivery model intended to support better coordination for cancer care. The initiative will include 24-hour access to practitioners for beneficiaries...
ASCO will once again be offering a series of Pre–Annual Meeting Seminars ahead of its 2015 Annual Meeting in Chicago. First offered in 2012, the Pre–Annual Meeting Seminars are a series of in-depth educational opportunities dedicated to topics of interest in the oncology community. The seminars are ...
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column providing insight into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its policies and procedures. In this installment, Leah Christl, PhD, and Albert Deisseroth, MD, PhD, answer questions about biosimilar products. Dr. Christl is the Associate Director...
Disparities of care that result in poorer outcomes among certain populations have long been an issue addressed by the cancer community and its major organizations such as ASCO. While ethnicity and race play key roles in this ongoing debate over equitable allocation of our precious health-care...
Patients who described physician-controlled decisions about their cancer care vs shared decision-making were less likely to report receiving excellent quality of care, according to a study published by JAMA Oncology.1 The Institute of Medicine has called for shared decision-making and accommodation ...
The results of the SOFT trial—presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, reported recently by Francis et al in The New England Journal of Medicine,1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—were not as conclusive as we had hoped. In essence, the study enrolled women with resected ...
In a phase III trial (SOFT) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Prudence A. Francis, MD, of Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia, Meredith M. Regan, ScD, of IBCSG Statistical Centre at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and colleagues found that the addition of...
Women who had breast cancer followed by thyroid cancer were younger on average when diagnosed with their breast cancer than those with breast cancer alone. They also were more likely to have had invasive ductal carcinoma and to have received radiation therapy as part of their breast cancer...
Breast cancer survivors are at increased risk of developing thyroid cancer, especially within 5 years of their breast cancer diagnosis, according to a new analysis of a large national database. The study results were presented at the Endocrine Society’s 97th Annual Meeting.1 “Recognition of this...
Bekelman and colleagues are to be congratulated on the publication of an important paper—reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—alerting us all to the underutilization of hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation in the treatment of early-stage breast cancer.1 As background, recent randomized...
Nancy Kemeny, MD, Attending Physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, discussed the study at the session and noted several limitations: The data could be outdated (chemotherapy and surgery could be better now), some...
For the treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer, the optimal timing between the end of neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy and surgical resection appears to be 60 days, according to an analysis of the National Cancer Database presented at the 2015 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.1 An interval ...
In 2015, no cancer patients should be cured of their malignancy only to die of reactivation of hepatitis B virus (HBV),” according to Anna S. Lok, MD, the Alice Lohrman Andrews Research Professor in Hepatology and Director of Clinical Hepatology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “I...
A large observational study presented at the 2015 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in Orlando, Florida, found that adjuvant chemotherapy extended the likelihood of survival in locally advanced bladder cancer compared with observation alone.1 Using three different approaches to propensity scores...
Formal discussant of both trials, Jonathan Rosenberg, MD, of the Genitourinary Division at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, agreed that both studies move the field of antiangiogenesis in advanced bladder cancer forward. “The very high overall response rates in the pazopanib plus...
Two separate phase II studies lend support to the concept of antiangiogenesis in advanced bladder cancer. The combination of an antiangiogenic agent and chemotherapy may fulfill an unmet need in this disease, the studies suggest. Both studies were presented at the 2015 Genitourinary Cancers...
GETUG-AFU 15 sought to improve outcomes in metastatic hormone-naive prostate cancer, but the study failed its primary objective,” noted formal discussant Eric J. Small, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco. In the overall analysis of this previously published trial, with no...
Managing older-aged cancer patients represents one of the major challenges to our health-care system. Caring for older cancer patients, with their frequent multiple morbidities and a variable health status, requires special integration of an oncologic and geriatric approach. Moreover, our aging...
Health-care fraud is a long-standing problem in the United States, accounting for $75 billion in government expenses per year,1 while total spending on government health-care programs is over $1 trillion. Two decades ago, the Department of Justice increased its efforts to combat health-care fraud....
Emerging evidence suggests that immunotherapy may play an important role in treating prostate cancer. In particular, preliminary results have shown that combining a new vaccine with ipilimumab (Yervoy) boosts overall survival in men with castration-resistant prostate cancer.1 A study comparing...
Among men undergoing biopsy for suspected prostate cancer, targeted magnetic resonance (MR)/ultrasound fusion–guided biopsy was associated with an increased rate of detection of high-risk prostate cancer and a decreased rate of detection of low-risk prostate cancer than was standard...
Patients with early-stage breast cancer still undergo imaging for distant metastases despite evidence-based local, national, and international guidelines—and a recommendation from ASCO—to avoid such imaging, according to a retrospective review of staging imaging for distant metastases in patients...
“Laparoscopic colectomy has been shown to have equivalent oncologic outcomes to open colectomy for the management of colon cancer, but its adoption nationally has been slow,” Heather Yeo, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and colleagues noted in reporting on a study...
The average annual number of adults treated for skin cancer, both melanoma and nonmelanoma, in the United States increased from 3.4 million in 2002 to 2006 to 4.9 million in 2007 to 2011 (P < .001), according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. “During this...
ASCO Answers: Managing the Cost of Cancer Care explains the various costs associated with cancer treatment, including health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It also provides a list of financial resources available to help offset expenses related to care and tips for organizing...
Editor’s note: We regret to announce that Paul Kalanithi, MD, passed away on March 9, 2015. Dr. Kalanithi was Chief Resident in Neurological Surgery at Stanford University when he shared his story, reprinted here, with The ASCO Post just over 1 year ago, in March 2014. We extend our deepest...
While colorectal cancer predominantly occurs in people over 50 years old, rates are increasing among younger patients. It is important for physicians not to ignore symptoms in patients who are young, “simply because they are young,” Jason A. Zell, DO, MPH, told The ASCO Post. Dr. Zell is the...
A growing body of literature indicates that the incidence of colorectal cancer is rising among people under age 50, according to Jason A. Zell, DO, MPH. Dr. Zell is the corresponding author of one of the two recent studies finding significant increases in colorectal cancer among adults aged 20 to...
In the winter of 2013, my son, Dmitriy, now 26, had a cough that wouldn’t go away. After several rounds of antibiotics failed to halt the persistent problem, a pulmonologist we consulted ordered a chest x-ray, which showed a large tumor lodged between Dmitriy’s lungs. Although the doctor said the...
APRIL Melanoma and Cutaneous Malignancies MeetingApril 10-11 • New York, New York For more information: www.healio.com/meeting/hemonctodaymelanoma/home?promocode689-8045 Hematologic Malignancies: New Therapies and the Evolving Role of TransplantApril 10-11 • Chicago, Illinois For more information: ...
In an important post hoc analysis (reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post), Van Cutsem and colleagues have further refined our knowledge of who are the “right” patients with metastatic colorectal cancer to receive treatment with cetuximab (Erbitux).1 This refinement was accomplished through the...
In the Institute of Medicine’s 2014 report Dying in America,1 the report’s authors found that while frequent clinician-patient conversations about end-of-life care, goals, and preferences are necessary to avoid unwanted treatment, most patients do not have those conversations with their physicians. ...
Currently in myeloma, there are at least five new agents that are either approved or in the late-stage of development with impending approval. Major questions in the field relate to how we, as clinicians, will use these new agents and where they will fit in the overall treatment schema. The phase...
The use of radiation therapy in the treatment of gastrointestinal cancer has evolved over the past several decades, in a gradual, stepwise fashion. Since most gastrointestinal cancers are diagnosed at a locally advanced stage, coupled with the inherent sensitivity of most parts of the...