Currently, two medications have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reduce the risk of breast cancer: tamoxifen and raloxifene. Both medications, selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs), have been shown to reduce the risk for breast cancer by up to 50% in prevention...
A higher-dose, shorter form of radiation is safe, effective, and no more damaging to the breast tissue or skin of breast cancer patients under age 50 than it is in older patients. This is the finding of a study led by researchers from Perlmutter Cancer Center at New York University (NYU)...
The text and photograph on this page are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology Tumors & Treatment: A Photographic History, by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. The photo below is from the volume titled “The Anesthesia Era: 1845–1875.” The photograph...
At the 2017 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, Dan Sherman, MA, LPC, discussed potential solutions to the persistent challenge of financial toxicity in the oncology setting. Mr. Sherman is a clinical financial consultant and Founder and President of The Navectis Group, Caledonia, Michigan. Rather than...
The statistics on physician suicide are stark: Physicians are more than twice as likely to take their own lives as nonphysicians, and more than 400 physicians commit suicide each year in the United States. Moreover, young physicians at the early part of their training are reported to be...
Investigators at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) have announced the opening of enrollment for a unique precision medicine clinical trial. NCI-COG Pediatric Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (Pediatric MATCH) is a nationwide trial to explore whether...
MANY health-care experts disagree about when screening mammography is appropriate and for whom. That’s what Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk (WISDOM) seeks to remedy. The University of California (UC) Health study aims to uncover whether annual mammograms really are the best...
A pair of recent studies show a troubling trend: Despite a 20% decrease in cancer mortality rates nationwide over the past 2 decades,1 Americans living in rural regions of the United States are more likely to die of cancer than persons living in metropolitan areas of the country. An analysis of...
At the time this article was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dr. Danaher was practicing at Monash -University, -Melbourne, Australia; Drs. Brand and Mack, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston; Dr. Pickard, at the Imperial College -Healthcare NHS Trust, London; and Dr. Berry,...
Under the direction of Martin J. Edelman, MD, Chair, Department of Hematology/Oncology, who joined Fox Chase Cancer Center earlier this year, the department has been reorganized into four sections: Hematologic Malignancies, Solid Tumor Oncology, General Hematology/Oncology, and Fox Chase at Temple...
Palliative care provided soon after a patient is diagnosed with incurable cancer not only helps improve the patient’s overall quality of life but also improves communication about the patient’s wishes for end-of-life care, according to a study by Jennifer S. Temel, MD, Clinical Director of Thoracic ...
AMYLOIDOSIS REMAINS a challenging and nuanced diagnosis. At the 2017 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and Oncology Conference, held in Sea Island, Georgia, Jonathan L. Kaufman, MD, discussed his approach to diagnosing amyloid light-chain amyloidosis. Dr. Kaufman is Associate Professor of...
AT THE 12TH ANNUAL New Orleans Summer Cancer Meeting, Thomas Herzog, MD, Deputy Director of the University of Cincinnati Cancer Institute and Professor of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, delivered an update on nonimmunotherapy advances in...
Immune-cell based therapies opening a new frontier for cancer treatment carry unique, potentially lethal side effects that provide a new challenge for oncologists—one addressed by a team led by clinicians at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center with proposed guidelines for...
When I was in high school, I spent summers working as a restaurant dishwasher, grocery store stock boy, and gardener in northwest Indiana. The idea of spending those weeks learning about science and medicine would not have been an option for me at that time. Yet it is precisely those students who...
THE MEMBERS of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) have elected three new officers to ASTRO’s Board of Directors and three members to serve on the medical society’s Nominating Committee. The newly elected President-Elect, Health Policy Council Vice-Chair, Science Council Vice-Chair, ...
WITH THE MANY NEWS REPORTS about Senator John McCain being diagnosed with glioblastoma, patients may be asking if symptoms such as headaches and vision or speech problems should signal the need for screening or diagnostic tests. “There has never been any suggestion that doing routine screening,...
THE NCCN Foundation has granted its fifth Young Investigator Award for the 2017 cycle to Liqin Zhu, PhD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital/ University of Tennessee Health Science Center, for the study titled, “Patient-Derived Tumor Spheroids for High-Risk Hepatoblastoma Drug Discovery.”...
Many Type A personalities deal with problems by controlling all aspects of the problem. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it works for a while. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. The health-care system—hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices—have policies (specific office hours and strict...
It was 2:15 PM, and my afternoon clinic had not yet begun. The morning had been particularly trying as a result of disastrous clinical developments for two of my long-standing patients. Jessica had metastatic breast cancer, and I had been taking care of her for 7 years. Multiple lines of...
The literature has documented the stress and damage that intimacy problems cause among women undergoing cancer treatment and during survivorship. A new book, Sex and Cancer: Intimacy, Romance, and Love After Diagnosis and Treatment, by Saketh R. Guntupalli, MD, and Maryann Karinch tackles the...
On September 3, 1928, Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming returned to London from a vacation and sorted through some petri dishes containing colonies of Staphylococcus. He noticed something unusual in one dish: It was dotted with colonies except for one area where a patch of mold grew....
Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FASCO, a long-time member and volunteer, began her term as ASCO President-Elect in June 2017; she will serve as 2018–2019 ASCO President. An active ASCO member since 1995, Dr. Bertagnolli is Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s...
Internationally recognized genitourinary oncologist Maha Hussain, MD, FACP, FASCO, was born and reared in Baghdad, Iraq. “I came from a family that stressed the value of higher education and especially medicine. I have three uncles who are physicians, and my father encouraged my three siblings and...
Edith Peterson Mitchell, MD, a leading researcher, medical oncologist, and proponent of combined-modality treatment, has been chosen as the 2017 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Honorary Member. Dr. Mitchell will receive this award—which is the highest honor ASTRO awards to...
The evidence from clinical trials has established that “side matters” when it comes to colorectal cancer outcomes. How do clinicians use this information in their practices? Christina Wu, MD, of Emory University, shared her thoughts with attendees at the 2017 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and ...
Researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found a relationship between the genetics of tumors with germline BRCA1/2 mutations—and whether the tumor retains the normal copy of the BRCA1/2 gene—and risk for primary resistance to a common...
FAKE NEWS, junk science, and alternative facts seem pervasive in our current culture, to the detriment of important, verified scientific advancements. One area where this is quite evident is the vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV). Although we have had a safe, effective vaccine since 2006...
Older adults continue to be proportionally underrepresented in oncology clinical trials, but the participation rate of adults aged 65 and older is increasing by “slow, incremental changes,” Stuart M. Lichtman, MD, FACP, FASCO, noted in an interview with The ASCO Post. Prompting those changes are...
Angela H. Brodie, PhD, a pioneer in breast cancer research, passed away on June 7, 2017, from complications of Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic cancer. An obituary for Dr. Brodie was published previously in the June 25, 2017, issue of The ASCO Post. Here, Dr. Balkees Abderrahman shares a...
Claire Verschraegen, MD, has been appointed Director of the Division of Medical Oncology and Associate Director of the Translational Research Program at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center–Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC–James)....
The following essay by Hope S. Rugo, 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. I was in...
Triple-negative breast cancer has a reputation for being a particularly challenging malignancy, but breast cancer specialist Nancy Davidson, MD, Senior Vice President of the Clinical Research Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, put this in perspective in a recent...
When a woman has an abnormal Papanicolaou (Pap) smear, she usually undergoes colposcopy—a procedure physicians use to closely examine the cervix, vagina, and vulva for signs of disease. Typically, a metal instrument is used to obtain a small sampling of cells inside the cervix, which is...
Dedicating one’s career and livelihood to the pursuit of treating and possibly curing cancer is, for many, a decision that stems from deeply personal and, often, tragic experience. For 2017–2018 ASCO President Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, the event that greatly influenced his decision was the...
Within the past few years, a type of immunotherapy known as T-cell therapy has emerged as a promising treatment option for certain cancers. T cells are immune cells that can fight infectious viruses—and also cancer. In T-cell therapy, these cells are removed from a patient’s blood, modified in the ...
PERLMUTTER CANCER CENTER at NYU Langone has announced the creation of a multidisciplinary center of excellence to develop innovative approaches to diagnose, treat, and prevent pancreatic cancer. The new Pancreatic Cancer Center brings together laboratory researchers, surgeons, oncologists,...
The following essay by Howard A. (Skip) Burris III, 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....
Roswell Park Cancer Institute graduate student Danielle Twum has received the prestigious Emerging Scholars Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), who recognized her among the distinguished alumni of its Continuing Umbrella for Research Excellence (CURE) programs. The CURE programs are...
“In the sufferer let me see only the human being.” So said Maimonides, the medieval Jewish philosopher and physician who espoused treating the patient rather than the illness, a philosophy that modern oncology had to relearn. This brief quote greets readers of a new book called Extreme Measures:...
The seemingly impossible-to-cure maladies of our $3 trillion per year health-care system have been hyperanalyzed, fiercely debated, and voluminously written about by the country’s leading public health experts, opinionated doctors, and policymakers on Capitol Hill. The Affordable Care Act extended ...
A cancer diagnosis provokes a sea of emotions, fear and anxiety over the future foremost. However, being diagnosed with a common cancer such as breast or prostate cancer has a hard-won comfort zone, in that both patients and physicians are armed with a plethora of data and resources on how to treat ...
This is the story, told through their own photographs, of a group of adolescent patients with cancer in their search for happiness. Their images relay their hopes and fears, their desire to be normal, and their urge to escape. These photographs are the outcome of a creative arts–based support...
GUEST EDITOR Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology explores the unique physical, psychosocial, social, emotional, sexual, and financial challenges adolescents and young adults with cancer face. The column is guest edited by Brandon Hayes-Lattin, MD, FACP, Professor of Medicine and Medical Director...
INVESTIGATORS AT Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) have received a $17 million program project grant renewal from the National Cancer Institute to study the effectiveness of different breast cancer screening and surveillance strategies using digital mammography, digital breast...
Since the founding of the American Medical Association (AMA) in 1847, Barbara L. McAneny, MD, is the fourth woman and first oncologist to be elected President of the venerable medical association. “I’m a generic Midwesterner. I was born in Missouri and raised in Madison County, Illinois, and went...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) will award its annual Survivor Circle grants to two San Diego–based cancer support charities: Cancer Angels of San Diego and The Seany Foundation. Each organization will receive an $8,500 grant to support its programs for those who have been...
On July 7, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, MD, named Brenda Fitzgerald, MD, as the 17th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). “I am extremely proud and excited to announce...
Today, investigators at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) announced the opening of enrollment for a unique precision medicine clinical trial. NCI-COG Pediatric Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (Pediatric MATCH) is a nationwide trial to explore...
How well patients with cancer fared after chemotherapy was affected by their social interaction with other patients during treatment, according to a new study by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the University of...