Cancer, Cancer Treatment

By Karla Gale

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Freezing embryos before undergoing cancer treatment that may cause infertility is as successful for women with cancer as it is for women without cancer, new study findings indicate.

The investigators, who presented their findings this week at the 64th annual meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine in San Francisco, recommend this means preserving fertility for cancer patients, because the ovaries are severely compromised by chemotherapy and radiation.

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Treatment with cetuximab (Erbitux) was less effective for patients with advanced colorectal cancer with a certain gene mutation, a new study found. Scientists already knew that the presence of K-ras mutations explains about 30 to 40 percent of cases in which colorectal cancer patients fail to respond to Erbitux, developed by ImClone and sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck KGaA, and Vectibix, from Amgen. The latest findings added another 12 percent.

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FRIDAY, Nov. 14 — A majority of Americans, including many health-care workers, believe that people who have lung cancer are at least partly to blame for their disease, a new survey finds.

In the poll of nearly 1,500 American adults, researchers found 59 percent of respondents agreeing with the notion that lung cancer patients helped bring on their diagnosis.

It’s a bias that over time has led to fewer resources to investigate the number one cancer killer in the U.S, and added shame to the burden that lung cancer patients must carry, experts said.

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FRIDAY, Oct. 17 — Many patients misunderstand the written questions American doctors have them answer before physical exams, a finding that calls into question the usefulness of these screening tools, new reports say.

Two studies, presented earlier this year at the 2008 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons, found that lower-than-expected literacy levels among patients and a failure to understand basic numerical measurements hurt the validity of the questionnaire results. A third study, though, found promise in using computer programs to “speak” the questions to patients.

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That’s a tricky question and, ultimately, each woman needs to make that decision with her doctor. But there are some advantages to having chemotherapy first.

It may be a good option “in women who have a tumor that is too big in relation to the breast size for conservative surgery[lumpectomy] but who want to have conservative surgery,” said Dr. Eric Winer, director of breast cancer oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In these cases, chemotherapy can often shrink a tumor enough to allow breast-conserving surgery. Women who get such surgery typically get radiation afterward to prevent local and regional recurrence.

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WEDNESDAY, Oct. 29 — Hot flashes, night sweats and joint symptoms in breast cancer patients getting endocrine treatment are signs of estrogen depletion or blockage and may point to successful treatment, British researchers report.

They compared women who reported these symptoms and those who didn’t mention such symptoms at their first follow-up visit during a trial assessing tamoxifen or anastrozole for adjuvant therapy of postmenopausal breast cancer.

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By Karla Gale

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Freezing embryos before undergoing cancer treatment that may cause infertility is as successful for women with cancer as it is for women without cancer, new study findings indicate.

The investigators, who presented their findings this week at the 64th annual meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine in San Francisco, recommend this means preserving fertility for cancer patients, because the ovaries are severely compromised by chemotherapy and radiation.

Read the rest of this entry »

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 22 — People hearing the devastating news that they have cancer have trouble remembering the details of the conversation with their doctor.

And, those who have the worst prognosis are likely to remember even less, a new study found.

Reporting in the Nov. 20 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers from the Netherlands and Australia found that most people just diagnosed with cancer remembered less than half of what their doctor had told them.

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New data show that CAPHOSOL, an advanced electrolyte solution, results in low rates of oral mucositis and pain in patients with head and neck (HN) cancer who are undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

The data, which were presented at the Advanced Practice Nursing Conference of the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS), demonstrate that use of CAPHOSOL from the initiation of cancer treatment results in a low incidence of oral mucositis (OM) and is associated with high levels of patient and physician satisfaction and medication compliance.

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 5 (HealthDay News) — In a genetics first, researchers report that they have decoded the complete DNA sequence of a person with acute myelogenous leukemia.

There were some surprises — eight previously unknown mutations, along with two already identified genetic alterations, were associated with the blood cell cancer.

But more importantly, it is now possible to detect individual genetic differences for each case of cancer, said study senior author Richard K. Wilson, director of the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center, in St. Louis.

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