Tag Archives: society

Mammography benefits women over 75, new study finds

The value of mammography screening in older women has been subject to much debate in recent years. The American Cancer Society recommends annual mammograms for women age 75 and older as long as they are in good health, while the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) does not recommend mammography screening in this age group, citing insufficient evidence to evaluate benefits and harms. A lack of research is chiefly responsible for the divergent recommendations, according to Judith A…

Adding element to standard treatment in post-gemcitabine metastatic pancreatic cancer improves survival

“Patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer or pancreatic cancer in general have very limited options,” said study author Andrea Wang-Gillam, assistant professor in the Division of Oncology at Washington University in St. Louis, USA. “These patients just simply don’t do well. …

Significant side effects experienced by BRCA mutation carriers following cancer risk-reducing surgical procedure

“These results reinforce the need for care providers to better understand and communicate with patients about the possible long-term effects of bilateral RRSO,” said lead author Susan Domchek, MD, director of Penn’s Basser Research Center for BRCA. …

More patients with ovarian cancer are receiving chemotherapy before surgery

Looking back at medical records from more than 58,000 women, Fox Chase’s Angela Jain, MD, Medical Oncologist and co-investigator Elizabeth Handorf, PhD, member of the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Facility, found that only 8.94% received chemotherapy before ovarian cancer surgery in 1998; by 2011, that figure had increased to 26.72%. …

Common, hard-to-treat cancers: Potential new targeted therapies

“Cancer relapses and treatment resistance have always been among the most daunting challenges in cancer care,” said press briefing moderator Gregory Masters, MD, FACP, ASCO Expert and a medical oncologist at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center in Newark, Delaware. “The good news is that genomic medicine is helping to overcome these challenges by revealing new ways to target a cancer cell’s inner workings. …

Cetuximab or bevacizumab with combi chemo equivalent in KRAS wild-type MCRC

“The CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial was designed and formulated in 2005, and the rationale was simple: we had new drugs –bevacizumab and cetuximab– and the study was designed to determine if one was better than the other in first-line for patients with colon cancer,” said lead study author Alan P. Venook, distinguished Professor of Medical Oncology and Translational Research at the University of California, San Francisco, USA. The CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial studied patients whose tumours were KRAS wild-type at codons 12 and 13. …

Is Europe putting cancer research at risk?

The proposed wording of the regulation stipulates ‘explicit and specific patient consent’, meaning that researchers would have to approach patients every single time research is planned in order to consult their data or use tissue samples stored for research purposes. “Hope for patients facing a life-threatening disease like cancer is based on advances in research,” said Kathy Oliver, Chair of the International Brain Tumour Alliance [3]…