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Showing 2701 - 2750Obligation to Evaluate Racial/Ethnic Features That May Affect Outcomes for Patients With Breast Cancer
"WE ABSOLUTELY have an obligation to evaluate all of the features describing our patients with cancer when we are trying to figure out why some patients do better than others,” Lisa A. Newman, MD, MPH, reminded the nearly 700 participants at the 2018 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium, hosted by...
Founder of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute Relates the History of Cancer Research
Cancer memoirs are generally written by people who have an intimate relationship with the disease, mostly survivors, sometimes by those who are dying while writing, such as the breathtaking book, The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, by the poet Nina Riggs. Once in a while, a scientist or...
Focus on the Rocky Mountain Oncology Society
Formed in 1991, the Rocky Mountain Oncology Society (RMOS), a Chapter Member of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) and State Affiliate of ASCO, serves as the voice for Colorado’s multidisciplinary cancer care teams and the patients they serve. Representing the common interests of...
Lung Cancer Researcher Melissa Johnson, MD, Benefits From Father’s Perspective as Career Military Officer
Lung cancer researcher Melissa Johnson, MD, is a self-described “military brat,” whose father was a career officer in the Marine Corps, serving for more than 35 years. She was born in Oklahoma City and moved nine times during her childhood. When Dr. Johnson was in high school, her father was...
When Illness and Culture Collide
“‘Sickness’ is what is happening to the patient. Listen to him. Disease is what is happening to science and to populations.” —Lawrence Weed, MD, 1978 America’s massive health-care system is highly complex, with its own unique language, methods, technologies, and scientific approaches, developed and ...
Electronic ‘Datarrhea’ and Wellness
THE INTRODUCTION of the electronic health record (EHR) was supposed to lead us to a utopian world for health-care delivery in America. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law on March 23, 2010, promoted its implementation by providing financial incentives.1 The Centers for...
A Career Path Shaped by Unlimited Possibilities for Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, interviewed Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO, ASCO’s Chief Executive Officer. Prior to his current position, Dr. Hudis served in a variety of roles at ASCO, including President during ASCO’s 50th anniversary...
The Abscopal Effect: A Reemerging Field of Interest
For the past 50 years or more, oncologists have designed their treatment plans around the three pillars: surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Now, with a series of recent successes, immunotherapy is rapidly reemerging as the fourth pillar in the oncologic armamentarium. Despite major advancements...
Duvelisib in Resistant Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: Expanding the Treatment Armamentarium
The phase III DUO trial, reported by Flinn et al and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, has led to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a novel B-cell receptor (BCR) kinase inhibitor, duvelisib (Copiktra), which targets phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-δ/γ in patients...
Johns Hopkins Medicine Appoints Allen Kachalia, MD, JD, to Leadership Positions
Allen Kachalia, MD, JD, will be appointed Director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality and Senior Vice President of Patient Safety and Quality for Johns Hopkins Medicine, starting December 1. During his nearly 20-year career in medicine, Dr. Kachalia has served in a variety...
Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, Works to Unmask Cancer’s Achilles Heel
Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, knew from the start of his medical career that if treatments for cancer were to become curative, research in new therapies would have to move away from the mainstay one-size-fits-all approach of systemic chemotherapy to an innovative, personalized strategy that...
Modern Clinical Trials: Engaging Stakeholders at the Front Lines of Care
Randomized clinical trials have been providing high-quality evidence for decades, but there are limitations to the traditional design. At the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, George J. Chang, MD, MS, FACS, FASCRS, discussed the need to modernize clinical trials, so they continue to provide...
Treatment With Radium-223 Plus Abiraterone Not Advisable in Metastatic Prostate Cancer
The combination of radium-223 plus AAP (abiraterone acetate [Zytiga] and prednisone) was not superior to placebo plus AAP in the phase III ERA 223 trial, which enrolled men with asymptomatic bone-predominant metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.1 Patients treated with the combination had ...
Expert Point of View: Viktor Grünwald, MD, PhD
Formal discussant Viktor Grünwald, MD, PhD, of the Hannover Medical School, Germany, agreed that the results of JAVELIN Renal 101 were impressive, but he was more cautious about accepting avelumab (Bavencio)/axitinib (Inlyta) as a new standard of care without longer follow-up and quality-of-life...
Expert Point of View: Jean-Pascal Machiels, MD, PhD, and Tanguy Seiwert, MD
Invited discussant Jean-Pascal Machiels, MD, PhD, Head of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc, UCLouvain, Brussels, called the study “very important,” especially for showing that in patients with high expression of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1),...
Dealing With the Challenges Presented by the Parenteral Opioid Shortage
The opioid drug problem in the United States is a crisis, with unprecedented numbers of overdose deaths. The reaction to this has resulted in new federal laws and regulations aimed at restricting overuse and overprescribing of opioids. However, these well-intentioned actions, along with other...
NCRI 2018: Mortality in Men With Malignant Melanoma
The rate of men dying from malignant melanoma has risen in populations around the world, whereas in some countries, mortality rates for the disease are steady or falling for women, according to research presented by Yang et al at the 2018 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference...
ME STRONG Joins With ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation to Support Research for Men’s Cancers and Neuroblastoma
ME STRONG, a nonprofit public charity in Deland, Florida, is one of the newest supporters of Conquer Cancer. Linda Ryan, ME STRONG co-founder and 16-year cancer survivor, understands the importance of research: it saved her life decades ago, and she’s relying on experimental treatment as she...
ASCO in the Community: Listening and Learning From Our Patients in Appalachia
2018–2019 ASCO President Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS, FASCO, is putting the words of her presidential theme— “caring for every patient, learning from every patient” —into action. During her term, she and other ASCO leaders will be traveling to local communities around the United States to...
2018 Palliative Care: Can an AI-Based App Help Manage Cancer-Related Pain?
A study of 112 patients with metastatic solid tumors found that the use of an artificial intelligence (AI)-based smartphone app reduced both the severity of patients’ reported pain and hospital admissions. After an 8-week period, patients who used the AI-powered app to monitor and address...
Novel Physician-Driven Practice Model Offers Alternative to Community Oncologists
Three leading oncology practices have united with partners in technology and finance to launch OneOncology, a physician-driven company that aims to unite more than 225 community oncology providers from 60-plus locations. Altogether, OneOncology will treat nearly 158,000 cancer patients a year. The...
Developing Patient-Centered Palliative Care From Diagnosis to End of Life
In December, The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School will launch an innovative cancer care model called the CaLM (cancer life re-imagined) Clinic as part of its new cancer center, the Livestrong Cancer Institutes. The goal of the Livestrong Cancer Institutes and the CaLM Clinic is to...
Tackling Financial Toxicity: One Institution’s Roadmap Forward
ALTHOUGH FINANCIAL toxicity has become an important issue in the oncology community, evidence suggests the subject is rarely addressed by oncologists, exacerbating its grave effects on patients with cancer and their families.1 “But I don’t think it’s because health-care providers don’t want to...
Venetoclax for CLL or SLL With or Without 17p Deletion After Prior Therapy
On June 8, 2018, venetoclax (Venclexta) was granted regular approval for treatment of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), with or without 17p deletion, who have received at least one prior therapy.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data APPROVAL WAS BASED on ...
Do Incident Learning Systems Prevent Medical Errors?
ACCORDING TO a study by Johns Hopkins, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States.1 Lakshmi Santanam, PhD, tackled such sobering data at the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium. “Incident learning systems are not just about medical errors or data; it’s kind of a first...
Challenges and Successes of Adopting an Oncology Care Model
IN ORDER TO rein in the untenable rise in costs while delivering high-value cancer care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation developed a new payment system—the Oncology Care Model. At the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, Cardinale B. Smith, MD, PhD, shed light on the system’s...
End-of-Life Dashboard Drives Transformation With Actionable Personalized Data
A NUMBER OF STUDIES from the palliative care literature have shown that nonbeneficial health-care interventions actually may harm patients’ quality of life, increase patient and caregiver distress, and drive costs. Yet, according to the National Cancer Institute, about 30% of all cancer spending...
WHO Announces New Global Childhood Cancer Initiative
THE AMERICAN Childhood Cancer Organization (ACCO) supported the World Health Organization’s (WHO) announcement of a new global initiative to address the disparity between childhood cancer survival in low-middle versus high-income countries. The announcement came at the United Nations General...
Expert Point of View: Shahrokh Shariat, MD
“BACILLUS CALMETTE-GUÉRIN (BCG) failures are quite common, with a 66% recurrence rate at 5 years, and about 25% of patients will have disease progression,” explained formal discussant Shahrokh Shariat, MD, Chair of the Department of Urology at Medical University, Vienna, and Adjunct Professor at...
Radiation to Primary Tumor Improves Survival in Subset of Men With Metastatic Prostate Cancer
MEN WITH newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer do not typically receive treatment to the primary tumor with radiation or surgery. A new analysis of the STAMPEDE trial found that radiation administered to the prostate can improve overall survival in men with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate...
Immunotherapy Improves Survival in a Subset of Patients With Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
IMMUNOTHERAPY APPEARS to be the new upfront standard of care for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, based on a late-breaking presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress1 and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine.2 In ...
Increased Survival in Patients With Metastatic NSCLC Receiving Treatment in Academic vs Community Centers
Patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving treatment at academic centers have an increased 2-year survival compared to patients treated at community-based centers, according to findings published by Ramalingam et al in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology. An...
Family Archivist Holds Joyful Memories Amid Grief of Losing Loved Ones
BOOKMARK Title: The Trail to Tincup: Love Stories at Life’s EndEditors: Joyce Lynnette HockerPublisher: She Writes PressPublication date: May 2018Price: $23.95, hardcover, 288 pages Human mortality is embedded in the day-to-day challenges of clinical oncology; a cancer diagnosis is a reality...
Cancer Care in the U.S. Prison System
A health-care system is evaluated by various metrics: one is how it cares for its most vulnerable patients. The United States spends far more on health care than any nation in the world, yet access to high-quality oncology services remains elusive to certain minority populations—none more so than...
Findings From the National Cancer Opinion Survey: Alternative Therapies, Cost of Care, and More
Nearly 4 in 10 Americans believe cancer can be cured solely through alternative therapies, according to ASCO's second annual National Cancer Opinion Survey. This is despite research showing that patients who use alternative therapies instead of standard cancer treatments have much higher...
The Antiseptic Era: 1876–1900
The text and photographs 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 Antiseptic Era: 1876–1900.” The photograph...
The Persephone Trial Reconsidered
The Persephone presentation by Helena Margaret Earl, MBBS, PhD, got a lot of publicity after a pre–ASCO Annual Meeting press release, suggesting that 6 months of adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) is enough. The advice of experts has been that the evidence is inconclusive, but I have not heard a...
Health-Policy Forum Focuses on New Care-Delivery Paradigms
What was an MBA doing at the podium of a clinical oncology meeting? Ten years ago or so, that might have been surprising. But in an era of rapid change—in therapies, costs, payment models, and practice—it only makes sense. Amy Porter-Tacoronte, MBA, Health System Chief Administrative Officer at the ...
Prognostic Risk Model for African American Women With Breast Cancer
A prognostic model developed using a machine learning approach may be able to identify African American patients with breast cancer who have an increased risk of death, according to results of a study presented by Bhattarai et al at the 11th AACR Conference on The Science of Cancer Health...
ESMO 2018: HOBOE-2: Zoledronic Acid in Premenopausal Hormone Receptor–Positive Early Breast Cancer
Adjuvant treatment with zoledronic acid, plus hormonal therapy with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole, significantly increases disease-free survival compared to tamoxifen in premenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive early breast cancer, according to results reported by Perrone et al...
2018 ASTRO: SPPORT Trial: ADT With or Without Pelvic Lymph Node Radiation in Prostate Cancer
The first report of a large international clinical trial shows that, for men who show signs of prostate cancer after surgical removal of their prostates, extending radiation therapy to the pelvic lymph nodes combined with adding short-term androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) to standard treatment...
2018 ASTRO: Combined Radiation and Cisplatin in HPV-Related Head and Neck Cancer
A phase III trial has determined that cisplatin chemotherapy combined with radiation therapy showed high amounts of activity in human papillomavirus (HPV)-related head and neck cancer. Findings from NRG-RTOG 1016 were presented by Trotti et al the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society for...
ESMO 2018: First-Line Immunotherapy for Recurrent or Metastatic Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) improved survival in patients with head and neck cancer that has recurred or metastasized in the KEYNOTE-048 trial, according to late-breaking results from the study reported by Burtness et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress (Abstract...
ESMO 2018: Cetuximab vs Cisplatin in Patients With HPV-Positive Oropharyngeal Cancer Receiving Radiotherapy
Patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive throat cancer responded better to chemoradiotherapy than to cetuximab (Erbitux) with radiotherapy, according to late-breaking research reported by Mehanna et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress (Abstract LBA9_PR)....
Philip J. DiSaia, MD, Former President, Society of Gynecologic Oncology, American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Dies at 81
The grandson of Italian immigrants, Philip J. DiSaia was born on August 14, 1937, in Providence, Rhode Island. He earned his Bachelor’s in Science at Brown University and his MD at Tufts University. Upon the advice of his mentor in medical school, Dr. DiSaia obtained 2 years of general surgery...
Many Patients With Early-Stage Follicular Lymphoma May Not Receive Guideline-Recommended Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy for early-stage follicular lymphoma “is underused,” Joanna C. Yang, MD, MPH, and Joachim Yahalom, MD, declared in a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 This underuse of radiation therapy can result in overtreatment with systemic therapies or overconfidence in...
Humbled by Challenges, Renowned Hematologist Kanti R. Rai, MD, Recalls a Rich Career
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor, Jame Abraham, MD, interviewed Kanti R. Rai, MD, Professor of Medicine at the Karches Center for Oncology Research, Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset; Professor of Medicine at Zucker School of Medicine at...
I’m Not Dying of Cancer: I’m Living With Cancer
I’m a psychiatrist, so I don’t say this lightly: receiving a diagnosis of stage IV gastric adenocarcinoma made me insane. I had remembered the horrible deaths due to abdominal cancer I had seen during my medical training and was terrified that would be my fate as well. I knew from looking at the...
Has the Promise of Precision Medicine Been Oversold?
Recently, the term “personalized medicine” in oncology care has been overtaken by the more contemporary concept of “precision medicine.” According to the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the newer terminology shifts the focus to improving...
On the Frontier of Breast Cancer Research With Joyce A. O’Shaughnessy, MD
Nationally regarded breast cancer researcher and clinician Joyce A. O’Shaughnessy, MD, was born in upstate New York, just outside of Albany, where she attended grade school before her family moved to Beverly, Massachusetts, a suburban town 26 miles from Boston, where her family’s roots were....
