Dexamethasone mouth rinse should be given prophylactically to prevent stomatitis associated with everolimus (Afinitor)/exemestane in metastatic breast cancer, according to Hope S. Rugo, MD, principal investigator of the SWISH trial and Director of Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education at...
Palliative care is slowly but surely being integrated into the treatment of patients with solid tumors, but its role in the hematopoietic stem cell transplant setting is still lagging, speakers said at the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium. “There is a huge symptom burden among patients...
Elizabeth Jaffee, MD, Deputy Director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, commented on the promise of neoantigens during a press briefing at the 2nd International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference. “In addition to the development of new drugs...
Perhaps more than any other book in recent memory, When Breath Becomes Air has struck a chord among readers, both inside the medical community and among the public, desiring an honest and philosophical consideration of death. The autobiographical account of Paul Kalanithi, MD, a physician diagnosed ...
Arti Hurria, MD, a geriatric oncologist at City of Hope in Duarte, California, is the first graduate of ASCO’s Leadership Development Program to be elected to ASCO’s Board of Directors. Within 5 years of completing the program, Dr. Hurria went from learning leadership skills to applying them to...
Andrés Cervantes, MD, PhD, Scientific Chair of the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, concluded the meeting earlier this month by recognizing a number of important take-home messages. At a closing press conference, Dr. Cervantes noted that the “ESMO 2016 Congress has...
“This is very exciting work and is exactly what we need in prostate cancer,” said Colleen A. Lawton, MD, Vice-Chair of the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and moderator of a press conference where the study by Spratt et al was discussed. “The prognostic measures we use are rough and...
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center announced that Nancy E. Davidson, MD, Director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, has accepted the position of Executive Director of the Fred Hutchinson/University of Washington Cancer Consortium—1 of the 47 National Cancer Institute–designated ...
Two separate randomized trials presented at the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) affirmed the value of stereotactic radiosurgery as an option for postoperative treatment of the surgical cavity of resected brain metastases, potentially avoiding the cognitive...
A radiation boost to the local tumor bed following treatment with breast-conserving therapy (ie, local excision followed by whole-breast radiation therapy) improves local control for patients with ductal carcinoma in situ, according to a study of pooled data from 10 academic centers,1 presented at...
A partnership that added health navigation services to 2-1-1 call centers helped a significant number of underserved Texans receive cancer control measures such as Papanicolaou (Pap) tests and smoking cessation help, according to a study (PR12, C49) presented at the 9th Association for Cancer...
Triple-negative breast cancer in African American women is much more likely to lack the androgen receptor protein compared with triple-negative breast cancer in European American women, and this may contribute to the racial disparity in survival outcomes among these two populations, according to a...
African American cancer survivors are more likely than whites to experience lasting debt or forgo necessary medical care as they struggle with the financial burden of cancer, while whites are somewhat more likely to use existing assets to pay for their cancer care, according to a study (C13)...
Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in California may have led to a significant increase in the number of Hispanic breast cancer patients at a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer center and an increase in the number of Hispanic women who consented to participate in a...
The release of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Safety Communication “alerting women about the risks associated with the use of tests being marketed as ovarian cancer screening tests”1 and recommending against using these tests comes not as a result of startling new studies, but from an...
In a Safety Communication directed at women and physicians, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) alerted women “about the risks associated with the use of tests being marketed as ovarian cancer screening tests” and recommended “against using currently offered tests to screen for ovarian...
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...
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...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Distinguished Lecture on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities, funded by Susan G. Komen, honors an investigator whose novel and significant work has had or may have a far-reaching impact on the etiology, detection, diagnosis, treatment, or...
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 Susan G. Komen breast cancer organization gathered philanthropic, civic, medical, and business leaders in Washington, DC, September 14 to formally launch a $27 million, 10-city initiative to reduce breast cancer death rates among African American women. “African American women are almost 40%...
The Endocrine Society selected 14 leaders in the endocrinology field as winners of the organization’s prestigious 2017 Laureate Awards. Established in 1944, the Laureate Awards recognize the highest achievements in the endocrinology field. Three oncology leaders in particular were recognized for...
With checkpoint inhibitors in frequent use, clinicians strive daily to balance the efficacy and toxicity of these treatments. At the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, FASCO, the C. Willard Professor of Hematology-Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania,...
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...
In August 2016, the Healthcare Delivery Research Program of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute convened a group of experts in a variety of fields to identify a research agenda for optimizing employment outcomes among cancer survivors. A core...
Maria Werner-Wasik, MD, of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, summarizes a session she moderated on lung toxicity, including the impact of cardiac radiation, the risk of radiation to thoracic vertebral bodies, radiation pneumonitis, and upfront SBRT. (Scientific Session 39)
Even though I was just 3 years old when my symptoms first appeared, the memory is still fresh in my mind to this day, 71 years later. I had just come home from a friend’s birthday party and was sitting on the front patio steps immobilized by severe stomach pain. My parents said I was feeling ill...
There have been numerous books explicating the information a physician or patient needs to know about our current clinical state in the diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer. Many of them are good, but rare is a well-written book in the cancer genre that offers solid scientific hope exceeding ...
Patricia LoRusso, DO, Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and Associate Director of Innovative Medicine at Yale Cancer Center, has been named Chair of the Women in Cancer Research (WICR) Council of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). WICR is a membership group within the AACR ...
Allison Aggon, DO, has joined the Department of Surgical Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center, focusing on breast surgery. Dr. Aggon comes to Fox Chase from Crozer-Keystone Health System-Delaware County, where she has practiced as a breast surgeon and served as Medical Director of the Center for...
Stacey Ann Carter, MD, has joined the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center, part of the National Cancer Institute–designated Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine and the Department of Surgery as Assistant Professor. Dr. Carter joins the Breast Center team as a...
What do up to 60% of cancer survivors have in common? Answer: some type of long-term sexual dysfunction. How many cancer survivors seek professional help for sexual problems? Answer: less than 20%. Even when they do seek help, they may not be successful in finding professionals with expertise in...
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...
Maha H. Hussain, MD, has joined the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University as the Associate Director for Clinical Sciences Research. Dr. Hussain will also serve as Co-Director of the Lurie Cancer Center’s Genitourinary Oncology Program, along with Edward Schaeffer,...
Julie E. Bauman, MD, MPH, a head and neck cancer specialist and physician-scientist, has been named Professor of Medicine and the new Chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Arizona (UA) College of Medicine–Tucson, as well as Associate Director of Translational...
Intraoperative frozen margins from the tumor bed help to assess the prognosis of oral cancer, but the permanent specimen margin remains king, according to a retrospective cohort study reported at the 9th International Conference on Head and Neck Cancer.1 Results indicated that the rate of local...
A new study indicates that adolescent females with acute leukemia have low rates of pregnancy screening prior to receiving chemotherapy that can cause birth defects. These findings were published by Rao et al in Cancer. Although many chemotherapy drugs can cause birth defects, there are no...
An animal study suggests that resistance to tamoxifen therapy in some estrogen receptor–positive breast cancers may originate from in utero exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The study provides a new path forward in human research, as about half of the breast cancers treated with...
A large observational study examining the variation in breast density assessment among radiologists in clinical practice has found a wide variation—from 6.3% to 84.5%—in the percentage of mammograms rated as showing dense breasts, which persisted after adjusting for patient characteristics. The...
I am writing to ask the ASCO community for help in addressing a policy decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that requires oncologists to take a 700-hour course (on the full range of nuclear medicines) to give one medicine to their patients: prepackaged radioimmunotherapy. It’s...
According to the American Cancer Society’s 2016 Cancer Facts & Figures, behaviors such as poor diet choices, physical inactivity, excess alcohol consumption, and unhealthy body weight account for about 20% of all cancers diagnosed in the United States and likely could be prevented with...
Fox Chase Cancer Center recently announced two new appointments in its Department of Medicine. Christopher J. Manley, MD Christopher J. Manley, MD, has joined Fox Chase Cancer Center as the Director of Interventional Pulmonology in the Department of Medicine. “Dr. Manley’s expertise in pulmonary...
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...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will honor Laurence Boxer, MD, and Ralph Nachman, MD, with 2016 Mentor Awards at the 58th ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition in San Diego, California, for their sustained, outstanding commitment to the training and career development of early-career...
Three leading national cancer organizations have issued a consensus guideline for physicians treating women who have ductal carcinoma in situ treated with breast-conserving surgery with whole-breast irradiation. The new guideline has the potential to save many women from unnecessary surgeries,...
The moderator of the press briefing, Julie Margenthaler, MD, of Washington University, St. Louis, maintained there are few contraindications for nipple-sparing mastectomy. “I reiterate Dr. Jakub’s view. I agree it’s absolutely safe for BRCA-positive patients,” she declared. The contraindications, ...
Prophylactic mastectomy that preserves a woman’s nipple is oncologically safe in patients with deleterious BRCA mutations, according to the largest study yet to evaluate this approach in this high-risk population. “In more than 500 risk-reducing nipple-sparing mastectomies in 348 deleterious...
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...