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With more effective local therapy achieved by concurrent chemoradiotherapy for patients with advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, the occurrence of distant relapse is becoming increasingly observed. In a Phase 2 study, six weekly doses of carboplatin and paclitaxel prior to concurrent chemoradiotherapy resulted in comparable local control and fewer distant relapses when compared to prior studies from this group. The role for induction chemotherapy and the agents selected remains to be established.
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Statins and diabetes risk; new treatment guideline for diabetes; new pertussis vaccine recommendation; antibiotics and rhinosinusitis; fluoroquinolones and cystitis; and FDA actions.
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Ipilimumab has recently been approved for the treatment of advanced melanoma. The current trial was undertaken to determine its safety and efficacy in patients with brain involvement.
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Drug shortages; metformin and cancer prevention; migraine prevention guidelines; and FDA actions.
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The practice of tanning by artificial means, such as by sunlamps or sunbeds, continues to be popular, particularly in young people despite the acknowledged risk for increased skin cancer.
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The patient is a 56-year-old woman with known meningioma first resected in 1999 followed by external beam irradiation. In 2005, she developed progressive right leg weakness and had a second operation and course of radiation.
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Two very recent publications address the management of newly diagnosed multiple myeloma. In the first, two bortezomib-containing three-drug regimens proved equally effective as a more complex four-drug regimen in achieving meaningful initial responses. The second demonstrated the value of maintenance lenalidomide for achieving longer progression-free survival.
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Host-related immunoproliferation may contribute to the pathogenesis of certain clonal myeloid disorders such as myelofibrosis and myelodysplasia.
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Potentially operable patients with Stage I non-small cell lung cancer who were treated with stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) between 1993-2010 were retrospectively identified in a prospectively collected database. Despite the median age of 76 years and the median comorbidity score of 2 in these 177 potentially operable patients, the 3-year survival was 85%. Post-SABR 30-day mortality was 0%, while predicted 30-day mortality for a lobectomy, derived using the Thoracoscore predictive model, would have been 2.6%. Local control at 3 years was 93%.
