Tag Archives: patients

Patients with inoperable, early-stage lung cancer who receive stereotactic body radiation therapy have 40% five-year survival rate

RTOG 0236 was a Phase II North American multicenter trial from May 2004 until October 2006 of patients age 18 and older with biopsy-proven peripheral T1-T2 N0M0 non-small cell lung cancer (early stage with no lymph node involvement or metastases). Patients in the study all had medical conditions that precluded them from surgery, so they received SBRT, a specialized type of external beam therapy that uses focused radiation beams at a tumor using detailed imaging…

Five radiation oncology treatments to question — ScienceDaily

• Don’t recommend radiation following hysterectomy for endometrial cancer patients with low-risk disease. Patients with low-risk endometrial cancer, including no residual disease in hysterectomy despite positive biopsy, grade 1 or 2 with <50 percent myometrial invasion and no additional high-risk features such as age >60, lymphovascular space invasion or cervical involvement have a very low risk of recurrence following surgery. …

Some lung cancer patients could live longer when treated with new radiotherapy strategy

SCLC is an aggressive cancer that accounts for about 13% of all lung cancers. The majority of patients present with extensive disease that has spread to other areas of the body. “In recent years, we have made some progress in improving survival by giving prophylactic cranial radiotherapy (radiation to the head to reduce the risk of the cancer spreading to the brain) after chemotherapy, and this is now considered the standard of care. …

Radiation therapy, concurrent chemotherapy after surgery is effective treatment for high-risk endometrial cancer

Endometrial cancer is the most common gynecologic malignancy. Patients with early-stage disease are typically treated with surgery alone; however, patients with advanced endometrial cancer have higher instances of local or distant recurrence. Concurrent radiation therapy and chemotherapy after surgery is used to reduce the rate of recurrence in patients with advanced disease. This study, “A Phase 2 Trial of Radiation Therapy With Concurrent Paclitaxel Chemotherapy After Surgery in Patients With High-Risk Endometrial Cancer: A Korean Gynecologic Oncology Group Study,” evaluates the efficacy and toxicity of concurrent chemoradiation with weekly paclitaxel in patients with stage III and IV endometrial cancer. …

Sabotage as therapy: Aiming lupus antibodies at vulnerable cancer cells

The findings were published recently in Nature’s journal Scientific Reports. The study, led by James E. Hansen, M.D., assistant professor of therapeutic radiology at Yale School of Medicine, found that cancer cells with deficient DNA repair mechanisms (or the inability to repair their own genetic damage) were significantly more vulnerable to attack by lupus antibodies. “Patients with lupus make a wide range of autoantibodies that attack their own cells and contribute to the signs and symptoms associated with lupus…

Symptoms after breast cancer surgery need to be treated on an individual basis

The authors state that it is crucial for good aftercare to understand and document a patient’s symptoms and target the treatment accordingly. Special attention will have to be paid to the risk of certain groups of patients: younger, premenopausal women suffer notably more from the effects of breast cancer than older women. In any case, women about to be given treatment for breast cancer should be given detailed information about late sequelae. source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140826085730.htm

Surgery associated with better survival for patients with advanced laryngeal cancer

Approximately 11,000 to 13,000 cases of laryngeal cancer are diagnosed each year and squamous cell carcinoma accounts for the vast majority of these tumors. Prior to 1991, total surgical removal of the larynx with postoperative radiation was the standard of care for advanced cancer. Since then, chemoradiation has become increasingly popular treatment because it can preserve the larynx. The authors evaluated survival outcomes for surgical vs. …