Cancer science and information technology are advancing rapidly, but the way we care for patients today cannot fully capitalize on those advances. The proliferation of scientific results and novel treatments is a growing challenge for all oncology professionals as we enter the era of highly...
As the world’s most common cancer among women, and the most likely reason around the globe that a woman will die of cancer, breast cancer affects countries at all economic levels. Despite the common misconception that breast cancer is primarily a problem of high-income countries, the majority of...
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. Despite recent news reports...
A coalition to promote and implement data sharing in cancer by facilitating data ‘liquidity,’ first proposed in February at an Institute of Medicine (IOM) workshop, is taking shape with the formation of a steering committee and action plans that include a demonstration project. For several years,...
In a whispered but resolute voice, Itzhak Brook, MD, MSc, led off his presentation at the 2012 ASCO Annual Meeting1 by telling the audience his voice is weak because he doesn’t have vocal cords. He spoke with the aid of a tracheoesophageal voice prosthesis. “I have practiced medicine for more than ...
Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) has recently launched several new features for readers under the direction of Stephen A. Cannistra, MD, who began his tenure as Editor-in-Chief in June 2011. These initiatives include the creation of two new article types: Rapid Communications (RC) and...
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. Psychosocial care needs are not...
How wonderful it is that we now have to concern ourselves with survivorship issues! The ever-increasing success of cancer therapy means that more and more patients can look to a life beyond cancer diagnosis and treatment. But living with cancer creates its own problems. While treatment often may be ...
How human beings cope with bereavement, loss, extreme adversity, and life-threatening illness has dominated the research interests of George A. Bonanno, PhD, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Teachers College at Columbia University, New York, for more than 20 years. In his book, The Other Side of...
I had been putting off getting a screening mammogram for a few years. When I finally made an appointment in March 2011 and was told that I needed a follow-up sonogram because the test had picked up a suspicious-looking mass in my right breast, I knew I was in trouble. A biopsy of the tumor showed...
“Dying is at once a fact of life and a profound mystery.” That was the opening sentence of a 1997 Institute of Medicine report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life, a much-needed jump-start in the national dialogue over identifying the barriers that impede the delivery of...
Despite its exponential growth since launching in 2007—from 1,450 attendees then to a record 2,530 last year—the Genitourinary (GU) Cancers Symposium remains an inviting meeting that feels small, accessible, and comfortable. And that’s the perfect blend for networking, said Jeff Michalski, MD,...
I first became interested in treating skin issues associated with cancer about 10 years ago, during my dermatology residency training at the University of Chicago. Many of the agents under clinical development at the time, such as cetuximab (Erbitux) or sorafenib (Nexavar), were causing...
A deadly contagious cancer known as devil facial tumor disease is pushing the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial, the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilius harrisii), to the brink of extinction. The loss of an interesting creature aside, the plight of the Tasmanian devil raises provocative questions...
While novel targeted agents may grab the headlines in the treatment of breast cancer, oncologists still debate the optimal delivery of conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy, still a vital component of treatment. At the Best of ASCO Boston meeting, Steven J. Isakoff, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General...
Three Best of ASCO meetings were held over the summer in Chicago, Boston, and San Diego. The faculty distilled the most interesting and immediately applicable data from the 2012 ASCO Annual Meeting, provided personal perspectives, and interacted with attendees for an educational experience that was ...
The American Psychosocial Oncology Society (APOS) offers a toll-free national Helpline as a resource to help people with cancer and their caregivers find counseling services in their own communities. Patients with cancer, caregivers, and advocacy organizations may obtain referrals for local...
Tweeting at concerts or plays may earn you scornful looks or even stern warnings from ushers, but tweeting at the ASCO Annual Meeting may enhance the meeting experience for you and others. In a study comparing trends in Twitter use by physicians during the 2010 and 2011 ASCO Annual Meetings, some...
Just asking patients “Is there something else you want to address in the visit,” rather than “Is there anything else you want to address in the visit today,” dramatically reduced patients’ unmet concerns during a primary care visit, according to a 2007 study.1 That learning can be applied to...
Developing early-phase clinical trials that incorporate combinations of novel agents targeting different pathways in the hematologic cancer multiple myeloma is a leading focus of the work of Sagar Lonial, MD, Professor of Hematology and Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs in the Department of Hematology ...
Kanti R. Rai, MD, and his wife Susan have been loyal donors to the Conquer Cancer Foundation for the past 9 years, but in 2012, a momentous occasion in his career inspired Dr. Rai to make a unique gift. A Moment of Reflection In the spring of 2012, Dr. Rai, an internationally recognized expert on ...
Community oncologists man the front line of cancer care, treating upward of 85% of our nation’s patients. Over the past 2 decades, regulatory and economic changes have left many practices in a state of flux and uncertainty, some struggling to keep their doors open. To shed light on the community...
In his 1990 Nobel Prize Lecture, Eduard Donnall Thomas, MD, with characteristic humility, acknowledged that the success he celebrated “was made possible by the work of many others in this and related fields.” Dr. Thomas, whose groundbreaking work in bone marrow transplantation marked a new era in...
Nine women on my mother’s side of the family have been diagnosed with breast cancer, and nearly half have died from their disease, including my mother. With odds like these, I was determined to do what I could to stay ahead of this dreaded monster I thought was surely coming for me. First Tests...
Oncology continues to be one of the most sought-after specialties. Because of a shortage of oncologists and the accelerating pace of developments in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, oncology has become an increasingly competitive field. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education...
Many experts agree that at 18% of gross domestic product, health care (to paraphrase Shakespeare) is eating the country out of house and home. “The average cost of treating the most common cancers has increased, and as more expensive targeted therapies and other new technologies become the...
Trials with pazopanib (Votrient) have “provided significant efficacy, toxicity, and tolerability data for pazopanib to be established as a first-line standard of care” for renal cell carcinoma,” Tim Eisen, PhD, of the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, stated at the 11th International Kidney...
“At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, we recently made a decision that should have been a no-brainer: we are not going to give a phenomenally expensive new cancer drug to our patients.” That was the opening sentence of a New York Times op-ed piece written by three physicians from Memorial...
Six years ago, at age 62, I was feeling in great shape. The year before, I had taken over custody of my 2- and 3-year-old great-grandchildren and decided to change the course of my career from motivational speaker to motivational coach to be home more often with the kids. It was during one of our...
Commenting on both radiotherapy studies and the use of proton-beam therapy in general, Jeffrey Bradley, MD, of Washington University in St Louis, agreed with both presenters that a randomized prospective trial is needed to justify the use of proton-beam therapy in prostate cancer. Washington...
Many patients with colorectal liver metastases can undergo surgical resection with curative intent. Who are these patients and how are they best managed? In an interview with The ASCO Post, Steven A. Curley, MD, Professor of Surgical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center,...
Created in 1964,a the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has become the world’s preeminent professional cancer organization, with more than 30,000 members in the United States and abroad, unified by its founders’ “common concern for the patient with cancer.” The ASCO Post recently spoke...
Providing care beyond medical treatment, the multidisciplinary field of psychosocial oncology addresses the psychological, social, and emotional health of the patient with cancer. On an occasional basis, The ASCO Post will explore the realm of psychosocial oncology with a column guest edited by...
ASCO has secured $3 million in new funding and key data sharing arrangements to support the development of CancerLinQ™, a ground-breaking information technology initiative that aims to achieve higher quality, higher value cancer care with better outcomes for patients. ASCO’s Conquer Cancer...
Results from the Adjuvant Tamoxifen: Longer Against Shorter (ATLAS) study “will have a follow-on effect of being able to guide physicians about the advantages of longer than 5 years of therapy for the premenopausal woman,” said V. Craig Jordan, OBE, PhD, DSc, Scientific Director at the Lombardi...
Imagine this common clinical scenario: A 64-year-old woman presents with a new abnormality on a mammogram. A core needle biopsy and subsequent partial mastectomy reveal a 1.8-cm invasive ductal carcinoma. Sentinel lymph nodes are negative for cancer. The tumor is moderately differentiated and is...
A critical component of informed consent is an understanding of the potential risks and benefits of investigational treatments. In the context of early-phase oncology trials, concern has been raised about whether this understanding is adequate, since patients tend to express high expectations about ...
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. Cancer and diabetes can be comorbid...
The illness memoir’s appeal proves enduring in a very crowded genre, perhaps because illness is a tie that binds us all. As Susan Sontag wrote in her classic work, Illness as a Metaphor, “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in...
For nearly 30 years, from the time he was a young resident at the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital for Cancer Research of Harvard University, until his death from lung cancer on August 31, 1969, David A. Karnofsky, MD, dedicated himself to the pursuit of scientific excellence and the...
Last fall, Edward P. Ambinder, MD, Clinical Professor of Medicine, Hematology, and Medical Oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and a member of ASCO’s Health Information Technology Work Group, spoke about “The Information Age: Cyberspace and Cancer,” at the...
When I began experiencing severe neck and back pain about 9 years ago, I had no idea it could be a late side effect from the radiation therapy I had received 31 years ago to treat my Hodgkin lymphoma. And none of the doctors I’ve seen over the past decade have been able to make the connection...
World leaders from governments, cancer organizations, and the private sector joined together recently for the first Global Women’s Cancer Summit to address the challenge of reducing the global burden of women’s cancers. The summit was hosted by Susan G. Komen for the Cure and underwritten by GE...
David J. Kuter, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Center for Hematology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, commented on the findings for The ASCO Post. “TOPPS is a good attempt to address whether transfusions are helpful as prophylaxis in patients...
If you are like the many supporters of the Conquer Cancer Foundation, you may have reached a point where you would welcome the opportunity to influence not only the future ownership of your possessions, but the meaning that others assign to your life. One way to accomplish this is by considering...
Laura van’t Veer, PhD, Director of the Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) of the University of California, San Francisco, commented on the meta-analysis. She said the study confirms that a pathologic complete response in the neoadjuvant setting is generally meaningful as it clearly ...
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...
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...
Self-identified smokers directly connected to a tobacco cessation quit line are 13 times more likely to enroll in a treatment program as compared to smokers who are handed a quit line referral card and encouraged to call on their own, according to a new study published online in JAMA Internal...
While IBM’s Watson supercomputer may have defeated two former champions on the TV game show Jeopardy! 2 years ago, it is now facing its greatest challenge yet: deciphering huge amounts of scientific data and interpreting clinical information to help oncologists make personalized evidence-based...