Today, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) finalized a landmark new payment system for Medicare clinicians that will continue the Administration’s progress in reforming how the health-care system pays for care. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of ...
The PARP inhibitor niraparib significantly improves the outcome of platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer, according to full data from the ENGOT-OV16/NOVA trial presented by Mirza et al at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Copenhagen (Abstract LBA3_PR), and...
Despite my breast cancer diagnosis 4 years ago, I feel really lucky. My cancer was detected relatively early, stage IIB, during a routine mammogram screening—a test that many of my lesbian friends skip because they don’t want to deal with a medical system steeped in a heterosexual culture that is...
We pass them every day on our way to the hospital, the street dwellers of our town in India. Their home consists of a plastic sheet suspended between four poles on the pavement. One day, two women sat under the plastic sheet in happy conversation. It had rained heavily the previous night, and I...
Mr. C is almost 90 now, but every summer the boxes of squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, and other vegetables from his truck farm still arrive like clockwork at our door. The cancer that required treatment 17 years ago has never recurred. He’s now struggling with a new problem, recovering from a broken...
Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, began his term as ASCO President-Elect in June 2016 and will serve as 2017–2018 President. A thoracic cancer specialist, Dr. Johnson is Chief Clinical Research Officer and institute physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical...
Susan M. O’Brien, MD, one of the nation’s foremost leukemia experts, told The ASCO Post that she wanted to become a doctor since her earliest memories. “The idea of being able to help sick people always appealed to me,” said Dr. O’Brien, who was born in Manhattan but spent her formative years in...
What are the factors that add up to the best outcomes for patients who have surgery to treat cancer? Looking for a better way to measure quality of care and share best practices in surgical oncology, a team from Roswell Park Cancer Institute developed a quality assessment tool and validated it in a ...
Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) celebrated its 20th anniversary September 21 at a special event in Washington, DC. The event honored Janet Woodcock, MD; Eric Lander, PhD; and Sean Parker. Dr. Woodcock, Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the U.S. Food and Drug...
The advent of immunotherapies has created a number of interesting challenges for oncology providers. At the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, specialists in the field tackled these issues. “There is a lot of newness to how we approach patient care with immunotherapies on board,” said...
This past summer, Eric S. Lander, PhD, President of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, raised a few eyebrows at the Aspen Ideas Festival when he...
Patients with cervical and endometrial cancer have fewer gastrointestinal and genitourinary side effects and experience better quality of life when treated with intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) than with conventional radiation therapy, according to research presented by Klopp et al at...
While searching for a noninvasive way to detect prostate cancer cells circulating in blood, Duke Cancer Institute researchers have identified some blood markers associated with tumor resistance to two common hormone therapies. In a study published by Gupta et al in Clinical Cancer Research, a team...
The Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group–American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ECOG-ACRIN) Cancer Research Group has received federal approval to add a quality-of-life research study, Communication and Education in Tumor Profiling (EAQ152), or COMET, to the NCI-MATCH (EAY131) trial, which is ...
On August 13, 2013, more than 100 cancer researchers and physicians from around the world met in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to discuss 2 challenging problem areas in cancer. One group was focused on the carcinogenic potential of low-dose exposure to chemical mixtures in the environment, and the...
Studies show that adolescent and young adult cancer survivors experience distinct challenges and quality-of-life issues from those experienced by either younger or older adult cancer survivors and that those challenges and issues can persist long after the cancer diagnosis and the end of...
When it comes to pediatric cancer, there are so many signs of hope, starting with the fact that the childhood cancer 5-year survival rate has climbed all the way up to 83%. But while we celebrate the victories of all these children over cancer, little is known about the long-term health effects,...
This summer, ASCO continued its active involvement in Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative. ASCO joined the Vice President at the formal launch of the moonshot earlier this year, and since then, has discussed research and policy proposals to advance discovery in cancer treatment...
A new study1 showing that just 1 in 20 terminally ill patients with cancer has sufficient understanding about the prognosis or purpose of treatment is highlighting the need for improvements in both the way oncologists communicate prognosis with their patients and in the development of educational...
Music therapy, an established adjuvant to standard cancer care, is offered in a growing number of cancer centers throughout the United States and internationally. Defined by the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) as “the evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individual...
A recent study1 published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (see “Breaking the ‘Conspiracy of Silence’” in this issue of The ASCO Post) found that just 1 in 20 patients with advanced, incurable cancer has sufficient understanding of his or her prognosis or life expectancy. Now, another new study ...
Cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates—perhaps more than any other chronic disease—shine a grim spotlight on global disparities of care. It is one of the most preventable of human malignancies, yet it is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women around the world. It kills 260,000 women...
With the expansion of our understanding of signaling pathways in normal cells and how they are co-opted or corrupted in malignancy, the number of potential antitumor agents to be tested has exploded, exposing the limitations of traditional antineoplastic drug development and challenging us to...
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently updated its guidelines for colorectal cancer screening1 from 2008 and has now included seven acceptable strategies, including direct-visualization modalities (ie, endoscopy and computed tomography...
A small device implanted under the skin may improve breast cancer survival by catching cancer cells, slowing the development of metastatic tumors in other organs, and allowing time to intervene with surgery or other therapies. These findings, reported by Rao et al in Cancer Research, suggest a path ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Julie M. Vose, MD, MBA, FASCO, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, and colleagues have provided a summary of the groundwork of an initiative by ASCO and the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) to identify and reduce...
Although targeted drugs like imatinib (Gleevec) have revolutionized the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), patients generally must take them for the rest of their lives and may cease benefiting from them over time. New research conducted by scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vose et al have provided a summary of the groundwork of an initiative by ASCO and the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) to identify and reduce administrative and regulatory burdens in the conduct of cancer clinical trials. The...
In 2012, my husband, Robert, and I were looking forward to starting the next phase of our lives and were feeling excited about the future. Although only in our 50s, we had decided to retire early from our full-time careers, move to our cabin in Hayward, Wisconsin, and find less stressful part-time ...
While a majority of states are still missing important opportunities to pass and implement legislative solutions proven to prevent and fight cancer, progress is being made to move the nation closer to ending cancer as we know it, according to a report recently released by the American Cancer...
The best part of my day is hearing that little voice yell, “It’s Momma!” as my son rushes to greet me with a hug. It is humbling, and sometimes terrifying, to realize that I brought a little person into the world who is completely dependent on my husband and me for survival. Few would argue...
According to William C. McGaghie, PhD, Professor of Medical Education and Professor of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, the principles of today’s clinical medical education are rooted in a 19th century model that is no longer useful in a...
By contributing a monthly gift to the Conquer Cancer Foundation (CCF), you can make a dramatic difference as we work to build a world free from the fear of cancer. An automatic charge to your credit card each month is the easiest way to complete your monthly donation. Secure and convenient, a...
In 2011, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published its landmark report “The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding,” which recognized the scarcity of research in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and the...
Sumanta K. Pal, MD, has had a longer career in oncology than many other colleagues his age. Perhaps the reason for that may center on his starting college at the age 13 and medical school at the age of 17. Today this internationally recognized leader in genitourinary cancers is Assistant Professor ...
A recent report regarding pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for advanced Merkel cell carcinoma ushered in a more optimistic era in the treatment of this rare but often lethal skin cancer.1 The ASCO Post spoke with one of the field’s leaders, Paul Nghiem, MD, PhD—the first author of the study—about the...
As reported by Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, and colleagues at the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) and European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO), the rising global burden of cancer and inequalities in surgical oncology education ...
In June 2016, the European Hematology Association Congress convened in Copenhagen, Denmark. The educational and scientific program highlighted state-of-the-art clinical practice and the latest findings in hematology research. The ASCO Post brings its readers brief summaries of some of the important ...
Certain factors increase the risk of unplanned readmission in the month after head and neck cancer resection requiring free tissue reconstruction, finds an analysis of data from the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) of the American College of Surgeons.1 Nearly 1 in 10 patients...
“This work is intriguing and may have clinical potential,” commented session co-moderator William B. Armstrong, MD, Professor of Clinical Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and Chair, Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, at the University of California, Irvine, Orange, ...
An analysis of data from more than 1,200 caregivers in the United States finds that cancer caregivers report a higher burden and spend significantly more hours per week caregiving, as opposed to individuals who care for people with other conditions. The analysis was based on survey data from the...
The words “cost control,” “value-based health care,” and similar iterations are floating around freely these days to make us aware of the unsustainable upward trajectory of health-care costs. We are reminded constantly about how health care in America currently costs more than $3.4 trillion...
Approximately 20% of patients with follicular lymphoma will relapse within 2 years of diagnosis. Although the optimal management of these patients has not been established, clinicians may be guided by data from recent clinical trials, according to Nathan H. Fowler, MD, Associate Professor and...
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) identified 14 genes regulating genome integrity that were consistently overexpressed in a wide variety of cancers. They then created a scoring system based upon the degree of gene overexpression. For...
Retinoic acid may play a critical role in suppressing colorectal cancer in mice and humans, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Mice with the cancer have lower-than-normal levels of the metabolite in their gut, the researchers found. Furthermore, colorectal...
Radiation for prostate cancer typically requires 40 to 45 daily treatments, given over 8 to 9 weeks. Long fractionation schemes are chosen for most cancers, because they allow for tumor killing while reducing the potential for injury to normal tissue. However, the radiobiology of prostate cancer...
Looking back, I’m haunted by what might have been if my advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) had been caught in its earliest stage, when perhaps a cure was possible. I certainly presented my physicians with enough clues—shortness of breath, coughing, and some body weakness—to have warranted...
The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare recently announced the launch of two comprehensive educational offerings informed by the Compassionate, Collaborative Care—“The Triple C”—Framework, a new interdisciplinary model focused on improving quality and outcomes. The new educational...
With the increasing population of older adults with cancer, there has been a commensurate need for more readily available and widely accessible educational and clinical resources in geriatric oncology. As part of the Cancer and Aging Research Group and ASCO’s Geriatric Oncology Special Interest...
After the Vietnam War, close to a million refugees, known as “boat people,” fled Vietnam, hazarding the open ocean on dangerously overloaded vessels. The term “boat people” is often used generically to refer to all the Vietnamese (about 2 million) who left their country by any means between 1975...