A few weeks ago, I read an op-ed1 in The New York Times written by Stan Collender, a patient with Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive type of skin cancer. In his article, he described his participation in a clinical trial for a new drug he is hoping will stem progression of his cancer and...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Gianni Bonadonna, MD, was considered the “Father of Italian Oncology,” but his scientific contributions to the field and his generous collegial spirit extended far beyond the shores of his native land. Dr. Bonadonna was at the forefront in the battle to convince the surgical establishment that...
BOOKMARK Title: The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-life CareAuthor: Angelo E. Volandes, MDPublisher: BloomsburyPublication date: January 13, 2015Price: $26.00; hardcover, 240 pages A quick Google search on books about end-of-life care will yield pages of hits on the subject. The...
BOOKMARK Title: The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles With the Heroes of the HospitalAuthor: Alexandra RobbinsPublisher: Workman Publishing CompanyPublication date: April 14, 20155Price: $17.53; hardcover, 368 pages Florence Nightingale, the most famous and influential figure in...
BOOKMARK Title: 10% Human: How Your Body’s Microbes Hold the Key to Health and HappinessAuthor: Alanna CollenPublisher: Harper CollinsPublication date: April 27, 2015Price: $39.99; hardcover, 400 pages "As I walked back through the forest that night in the summer of 2005, with twenty bats in...
The theme of the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, Illumination and Innovation, is especially appropriate as we consider the field of geriatric oncology. For too long, the elderly cancer patient has remained in the dark regarding treatment planning, clinical trial enrollment, and shared decision-making....
Statin use has been associated with improved outcomes in prostate cancer. In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Lauren C. Harshman, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and colleagues found that statin use at the time of the initiation of androgen-deprivation therapy was associated with...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently awarded Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah and The UNM Cancer Center (UNMCC) at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center status. An NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center must demonstrate depth and breadth of...
We’ll provide the resources. You provide the voice. The Campaign to Conquer Cancer is raising $150 million to support a world free from the fear of cancer. Our potential to raise money increases with every new person who learns about our work. We need the most trusted leaders in the oncology...
St. Barnabas Hospital is located in the heart of Bronx, New York, and as such, it has a culturally diverse, largely poor, patient population. The backbone of successful palliative care services is the doctor-patient communication bonding process. However, many of the patients with late-stage cancer ...
In an interview with The ASCO Post, Robert S. Miller, MD, FACP, Senior Director, Quality and Guidelines, ASCO, and Medical Director, CancerLinQ™, described how the system could work with data specific to radiation oncology. “The system is in the rapid build phase now, what we are calling the...
Radiation oncologists dream of a day when, faced with a new patient sitting in their office, they can quickly consult a computer database offering specific treatment recommendations based on accurate, freshly updated data from millions of previously treated patients with cancer. To hasten that day, ...
Febrile neutropenia is of particular concern in high-risk patients who have undergone stem cell transplant, according to William J. Hogan, MB, BCh, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Hogan delivered an update on febrile neutropenia management in this...
Are there patients with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) for whom chemotherapy can be omitted? Experts debated this question at the 2015 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and Oncology Conference in Sea Island, Georgia,...
A team of Mayo Clinic Cancer Center scientists has been awarded a Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant in multiple myeloma from the National Cancer Institute. The Center is one of only three cancer centers to receive a SPORE grant for multiple myeloma cancer research. “With...
Autologous stem cell transplantation has played a critical role in the treatment of mantle cell lymphoma, but in the age of novel treatments, is it always warranted? Two experts in the field explored the question at the 2015 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and Oncology Conference sponsored by...
"Double-hit lymphoma” represents a challenging malignancy without a standard-of-care treatment, although outcomes for some patients are better than was once believed, according to Jonathon B. Cohen, MD, Assistant Professor of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University, Atlanta. Dr. Cohen...
In a bold move to shed light on the ramifications of the ever-increasing cost of cancer drugs for patients with cancer and for the health-care system, 118 prominent oncologists came together to write a commentary in Mayo Clinic Proceedings detailing their concerns.1 To learn more about these...
Cancer prevention is a child-care issue. With many of cancer’s instigators planting their seeds during childhood, we—as a profession and as a nation—must seize this important window of opportunity to protect the health and well-being of future generations. Current estimates suggest that up to...
For advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), first-line treatment with combined immune checkpoint blockade—in novel doses and schedules—was associated with deep and durable responses, encouraging progression-free survival, and much better tolerability than has been previously observed with...
Over 80% of the 15 million people diagnosed with cancer worldwide in 2015 will need surgery, but less than one-quarter of them will have access to proper, safe, affordable surgical care when they need it, according to a major new Commission examining the state of global cancer surgery. The...
Thomas A. Stamey, MD, Professor Emeritus of Urology at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a leader in the study and treatment of prostate cancer, died of Alzheimer’s disease September 4. He was 87. A True Pioneer in the Field Dr. Stamey helped lay the groundwork for the...
Men with unfavorable-risk prostate cancer and moderate or severe comorbidities had significantly decreased overall and cardiac mortality when treated with radiotherapy alone vs radiotherapy and androgen-deprivation therapy, according to a study described in a research letter in The Journal of the...
A study of screening mammography across U.S. counties found that “the clearest result of mammography screening is the diagnosis of additional small cancers” but without a “concomitant decline in the detection of larger cancers, which might explain the absence of any significant difference in the...
The following essay by Emil J. Freireich, 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 learned...
BOOKMARK Title: Bald Is Better With Earrings: A Survivor’s Guide to Getting Through Breast CancerAuthor: Andrea HuttonPublisher: Harper CollinsPublication date: July 7, 2015Price: $17.99; paperback, 224 pages There are a plethora of books written by breast cancer survivors, and there are sure to...
BOOKMARK Title: Ordinary Medicine: Extraordinary Treatments, Longer Lives, and Where to Draw the LineAuthor: Sharon R. KaufmanPublisher: Duke University PressPublication date: May 29, 2015Price: $26.95 paperback, 336 pages Medicine has changed radically over the past 15 years. Who doesn’t welcome...
BOOKMARK Title: Epic Measures: One Doctor. Seven Billion PatientsAuthor: Jeremy N. SmithPublisher: Harper WavePublication date: April 7, 2015Price: $26.99; hardcover, 352 pages Health measures are essential tools in assessing public health and safety. Collecting large amounts of data is a laborious ...
Women diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ have a low risk of dying of breast cancer, according to an observational study looking at data from 108,196 women diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ between 1988 and 2011.1 The breast cancer–specific mortality rate for these women was 1.1% at 10...
Five research centers will focus on the safety of natural products, how they work within the body, and the development of cutting-edge research technologies. The centers, jointly funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) and the National Center for...
Rural cancer patients have long had to adjust to difficult geographic and financial barriers to access high-quality cancer care. These problems are exacerbated by today’s fiscal challenges, which have disrupted many of the small community practices that once served rural communities. In 2006, the...
Despite multiple guidelines from national and international organizations,1,2 the quality of current cancer pain management remains inadequate. The World Health Organization’s three-step analgesic dosing ladder forms the foundation of these guidelines.3 Yet, as noted by William S. Rosenberg, MD,...
The statistics are staggering. Despite the development of novel analgesics and the increasing awareness of the importance of adequately controlling pain from cancer or its treatment, up to 50% of patients undergoing treatment and between 70% and 90% of patients with advanced disease experience some ...
Immunotherapy, once considered a niche treatment for a few specific cancers, has rapidly emerged as an additional pillar of cancer therapeutics. With the proliferation of promising results, clinical trials, and new drug approvals, one cannot help but be amazed that only 3 years have elapsed since...
We'll provide the resources. You provide the voice. The Campaign to Conquer Cancer is raising $150 million to support a world free from the fear of cancer. Our potential to raise money increases with every new person who learns about our work. We need the most trusted leaders in the oncology...
In early 2016, readers of Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP) will be greeted with an expanded journal, featuring a new section of succinct, focused, practical clinical reviews authored by expert opinion leaders in oncology. These reviews are designed to provide busy, full-time clinicians with...
Bart Barlogie, MD, a myeloma expert who introduced the first curative therapy for multiple myeloma, a multidrug regimen known as Total Therapy 3, is joining the faculty of Tisch Cancer Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMM. Dr. Barlogie will serve as Director of Research in ...
The 2013 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report Delivering High Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis1 identified the dearth of evidence on older adults as a major quality-of-care issue. The U.S. population is aging at a rapid rate, and cancer is a disease that primarily...
Male breast cancer is an uncommon disease, although the incidence has increased over the past couple of decades. As with many other “orphan” diseases, male breast cancer is understudied, especially in randomized controlled trials. Although it shares similarities with female breast cancer, some...
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), about 70,000 adolescents and young adults—defined by the NCI as those in the 15- to 39-year-old range—are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States, about six times the number of cases diagnosed in children aged 0 to 14.1 And, although...
At the third annual Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference, speakers described the prevalence and consequences of overdiagnosis in several medical specialties, including cancer. The Conference, which had the theme “Winding Back the Harms of Too Much Medicine,” was co-sponsored by the National Cancer...
The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) announced that the MMRF CoMMpass StudySM, the most comprehensive long-term genomic study ever conducted in myeloma, has reached full enrollment, with 1,000 patients now participating. The global study is mapping the genomic profile of each enrolled...
Recent studies have yielded useful results that clinicians can put into practice, some right now, to help improve the quality of life for patients with cancer. Concerns addressed included cachexia, pain, “chemobrain,” and fertility preservation. At the Best of ASCO®/Chicago meeting, Arif Kamal,...
For the treatment of advanced squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) antibody nivolumab (Opdivo) continues to show results in key trials that now report 18-month data. The updates were reported at the 16th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Denver,...
Ductal carcinoma in situ has been a recent topic of debate in the news because of a recent article by Narod et al1 and an accompanying editorial2 about the study in JAMA Oncology. This study, summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post, chronicled the long-term outcomes for women diagnosed with...
Integrative oncology had a long road to acceptance by the mainstream medical community; the field is now widely accepted for its healthful benefits, especially in assuaging the more troublesome side effects of cancer treatments. Many well-known oncologists have adapted integrative oncology into...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors in real-world clinical practice tend to be older and sicker than the patients enrolled in pivotal clinical trials of these agents. In addition, patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma treated with the mTOR...
A study among patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with carboplatin-paclitaxel or carboplatin-paclitaxel-bevacizumab (Avastin) found that those receiving the triplet were more likely to experience a toxicity event but less likely to be hospitalized within 180 days after ...