Many concerns were raised and dire speculations predicted during the further implementation of the Affordable Care Act this year. So far, the trickling news is good: An estimated total of 20 million people gained coverage under the new law as of May 1,1 about 6 million enrolled in the law’s...
“Prolonged TV viewing and time spent in other sedentary pursuits is associated with increased risks of certain types of cancer,” concluded a meta-analysis of data from 43 observational studies including more than 4 million people and 68,936 cancer cases. A positive association with overall...
Postmenopausal women who in the past 4 years had undertaken regular physical activity equivalent to at least 4 hours of walking per week had a lower risk for invasive breast cancer compared with women who exercised less during those 4 years, according to data published recently in Cancer...
The information in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies for patients with kidney cancer. The list includes a pilot study and observational, randomized, and nonrandomized phase II and phase III studies evaluating new therapies, combination therapies,...
If Anand P. Jillella, MD, has his way, no future patient with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) will experience a delay in treatment or lack for an expert consult—and few, if any, will die of this condition. Mortality from APL is much higher than most oncologists think, especially during the first ...
Conquer Cancer Foundation donors are a consistently creative bunch when it comes to encouraging others to help conquer cancer: Tyler invited his friends and family to a charity spin class; elementary school students in Malibu, California, sold bracelets in honor of their principal; Steve competed...
Three years ago, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, launched a Supportive and Palliative Radiation Oncology (SPRO) program to integrate generalist palliative oncology services, including the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual aspects of care, into radiation...
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...
Tests in development to detect circulating tumor cells that escape from solid tumors and travel through the blood, spreading cancer to new sites, may serve as an alternative to conventional tissue biopsy for early cancer diagnosis and gene-expression analysis over the next decade. According to...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies of children and adults with intraocular cancers. The studies include pilot, phase 0, phase I, phase II, and observational trials evaluating new combination therapies, vaccines, optical...
In an accompanying editorial,1 Karla Kerlikowske, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues point out that while the finding of Killelea et al that digital mammography screening was not associated with downstaging of disease may not be surprising, given the similar accuracy ...
In a study of the use of breast cancer screening modalities in the Medicare population reported in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Brigid K. Killelea, MD, MPH, FACS, and colleagues at Yale University School of Medicine, Yale Cancer Center, and Yale–New Haven Hospital, New Haven,...
In a study reported in JAMA and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Friedewald and colleagues1 showed that the addition of tomosynthesis to digital mammography2 resulted in a decrease in the screening recall rate3 and an increase in the cancer detection rate.4,5 This retrospective analysis of...
In a large multicenter study reported in JAMA, Sarah M. Friedewald, MD, of the Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, Center for Advanced Care, Park Ridge, Illinois, and colleagues found that use of tomosynthesis plus digital mammography reduced the recall rate and increased the cancer detection rate...
More than 4.3 million women with limited access to health care received breast and cervical cancer screening and diagnostic services in the first 20 years of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. From 1991 to 2011, 56,662...
The 13-year follow-up of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC), reported by Fritz H. Schröder, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Urology at Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues in The Lancet, showed that prostate-specific...
Devices to accurately deliver high-dose radium therapy became extremely sophisticated during the late 1920s. In this photograph, the patient is being treated for a carcinoma of the back by a Sluys-Kessler machine. This apparatus could also accurately deliver therapy for a wide variety of internal...
Earlier this year the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organization, launched a World Cancer Report 2014. The report, a collaboration of over 250 leading scientists from more than 40 countries, described multiple aspects of cancer research and...
Clinical depression is highly prevalent, associated with significant morbidity, often underrecognized, and inadequately treated in cancer patients. Professor Michael Sharpe and Jane Walker, PhD, and their colleagues’ seminal work on enhancing treatment of depression in cancer patients using a...
In the Scottish SMaRT Oncology-2 study reported in The Lancet, Michael Sharpe, MD, and Jane Walker, PhD, of University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and colleagues found that an integrated collaborative treatment program for depression (“depression care for people with cancer”) was associated with...
Oncology fellows just years away from entering the profession full time may have unrealistic expectations of their future career, according to data published recently in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study by Tait D. Shanafelt, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues...
Few data are available on long-term risk of colorectal cancer mortality after adenoma removal. In a Norwegian study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Magnus Løberg, MD, of the Department of Health Management and Health Economics, University of Oslo, and colleagues found that patients ...
The investigators and sponsors of the phase III REVEL trial should be congratulated and probably commiserated. In this large study, reported by Garon and colleagues in The Lancet and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, 1,253 patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were...
Young women with early breast cancer may be more likely to resume menses and become pregnant when treated with a luteinizing hormone–releasing hormone (LH-RH) analog (also known as a gonadotropin-releasing hormone [GnRH] analog) along with chemotherapy, according to the final follow-up of...
Survivors of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who never smoked or who are former smokers at the time of diagnosis have a lower risk of developing secondary primary lung cancers compared to those who are current smokers, suggesting that increased tobacco exposure is associated with a higher risk...
This is a provocative study, showing unexpected differences in acute skin reactions with conventional fractionation vs hypofractionation. Some studies have failed to show differences in acute toxicities between these two types of radiation therapy,” said Kenneth B. Roberts, MD, Professor of...
Benjamin Movsas, MD, Chair of Radiation Oncology at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, served as moderator at a press conference where the two SBRT studies by Timmerman et al and Ashworth et al were reported.1,2 Dr. Movsas said that SBRT is a promising approach, noting that the therapy facilitates...
Benjamin Movsas, MD, Chair of Radiation Oncology at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, served as moderator at a press conference where the two SBRT studies by Timmerman et al and Ashworth et al were reported.1,2 Dr. Movsas said that SBRT is a promising approach, noting that the therapy facilitates...
Use of cisplatin or cetuximab (Erbitux) with radiotherapy improves overall survival in stage III or IV head and neck carcinoma, and adding cetuximab to platinum therapy improves overall survival in metastatic disease. In the phase III Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) 0522 trial reported in...
Smoking took an $18.1 billion toll in California in 2009—$487 for each resident—and was responsible for more than one in seven deaths in the state, more than from AIDS, influenza, diabetes, or many other causes, according to the first comprehensive analysis in more than a decade on the financial...
Women with atypical hyperplasia have an absolute risk of about 1% per year for developing breast cancer—a level of risk that has been underappreciated. Not enough is being done to protect these women, according to Lynn C. Hartmann, MD, Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,...
This is an exciting time for cancer research. We are beginning to see breakthroughs for patients with advanced melanoma, leukemia, multiple myeloma, lung cancer, and many other forms of cancer. Even so, cancer is projected to increase by about 45% and to become the leading cause of death in America ...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies of people with colon or rectal cancer in the newly diagnosed and metastatic settings. The studies include phase I, Ib, II, observational, and interventional trials investigating new drug...
Dartmouth researchers say lung cancer computed tomographic (CT) screening in the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) meets a commonly accepted standard for cost-effectiveness as reported recently in The New England Journal of Medicine.1 The screening test uses annual low-dose CT scans to spot lung ...
Earlier planned joint analyses of outcomes in the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) B-31 trial and the North Central Cancer Treatment Group (NCCTG) N9831 trial showed that adding trastuzumab (Herceptin) to adjuvant chemotherapy improved disease-free survival and overall...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On October 9, 2014, bortezomib (Velcade) was granted approval for ...
In an observational cohort study reported in JAMA, Allison W. Kurian, MD, MSc, Assistant Professor of Medicine and of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, and colleagues assessed use of and mortality after bilateral mastectomy, breast-conserving surgery plus...
While the incidence of colorectal cancer in people 50 years or older has declined, the incidence among people 20 to 49 years has increased, according to a report published online recently by JAMA Surgery.1 From 1998 through 2006, the incidence of colorectal cancer declined 3% per year in men and...
Carfilzomib (Kyprolis), as a single agent, failed to improve survival in relapsed and refractory myeloma patients, as compared with a corticosteroid and optional cyclophosphamide, in the phase III FOCUS trial, presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress in Madrid.1...
Now that clinicians know to “think beyond KRAS” in metastatic colorectal cancer—and test for all RAS mutations, not just those in exon 2—it seems this is still not sufficient for selecting the best drugs. At the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress in Madrid, a proffered paper ...
More than 150 oral and poster presentations were featured at the 2014 Breast Cancer Symposium, held September 4–6 in San Francisco. The multidisciplinary meeting is sponsored by ASCO, the American Society of Breast Disease, American Society of Breast Surgeons, American Society for Radiation...
It turns out that in addition to treatment-related toxicity, cancer patients commonly experience “financial toxicity,” a phrase that is increasingly coming into parlance in the cancer community. Patients should be assessed for financial toxicity as early as possible following diagnosis so that they ...
Overutilization of health-care interventions has become a prime target of efforts to rein in health-care costs. Overtreatment of cancer patients is associated with a number of common harms to the patient—not just financial harm to the health-care system. At the recent ASCO Quality Care Symposium in ...
Advances in science and medicine have led to humans living longer than at any other time in history. According to a new report1 on mortality from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy in the United States is at an all-time high of...
Cidofovir, an antiviral drug that is well established as a treatment for infection of the retina in people with AIDS, has been shown to be effective in combination with chemoradiation in a phase I study of women with human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cervical cancer. The study results were...
The Norwegian Colorectal Cancer Prevention (NORCCAP) trial comparing colorectal cancer screening with flexible sigmoidoscopy vs no screening showed no reduction in colorectal cancer incidence or mortality after 7 years of follow-up. As reported by Øyvind Holme, MD, of Sorlandet Hospital...
The Harvard Global Equity Initiative is a research program at Harvard University that is dedicated to promoting equitable global development, with a strong emphasis on health-care issues. This initiative brings together scholars, policymakers, advocates, and practitioners from around the world to...
"Obesity is associated with cancer mortality,” said Steven D. Mittelman, MD, PhD, at the recent American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.1 Dr. Mittelman presented a wealth of data to explain the link between obesity and...
A large, population-based, observational study suggests that participation in weekly tumor boards can improve outcomes in oncologic care. Specifically, oncologist participation in weekly tumor board meetings was associated with improved survival in patients with stage IV small cell lung cancer and...
Findings from a study of more than 23,000 women suggest that the Medicare Part D Extra Help program, which provides low-income subsidies for medications, improves adherence to hormone therapy after breast cancer surgery in all racial/ethnic groups and reduces racial/ethnic disparities. The study,...