Lung Cancer / Mesothelioma
This week, the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the US National Academy of Sciences, released a 400-page comprehensive report (prepublication available here; 8 page summary brief available as pdf file here). It notes that the rates of adult smoking has dropped by more than 50% since 1965 and that the rates of high school students starting […]
4 CommentsSeveral members have raised questions in the last several weeks around the question of whether antacids like garden variety Rolaids or Tums, a class of drugs called histamine H2 blockers like zantac and tagamet, and also proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) like prilosec (the “magic purple pill”), protonix, nexium, etc. that effectively shut down stomach acid may actually be […]
11 CommentsA member recently asked me whether treatment in the second-line or later setting for advanced lung cancer would potentially improve survival at a cost of quality of life, or whether patients can benefit not only in terms of how long they live but also how they live during that time. Since advanced lung cancer, […]
2 CommentsOne of the themes that we’ve covered in some of the posts introducing the clinical entity of BAC is the variability in its natural history. In fact, much of what we’ve been learning about BAC has been in the last several years, and we’re still learning more about it all the time. One of […]
4 CommentsThroughout their development over the past years, the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors Iressa (gefitinib) and Tarceva (erlotinib) have been identified as seeming to be particularly helpful in women compared with men. Only Tarceva is commercially available in the US, but Iressa is widely used in other parts of the world, including Asia, where it […]
2 CommentsWhile we are still working on figuring out the mechanisms underlying differences in the lung cancers of women vs. men, the efficacy and survival paint a consistent picture that women with lung cancer live longer than men regardless of the lung cancer subtype, stage, or treatment used (summary here). Large studies have reported that […]
0 CommentsWe have rarely divided cancers along the lines of sex, except for the obvious ones like breast, prostate, testicular, ovarian, etc., but there is growing evidence to begin to consider patient sex in the field of lung cancer. (As a semantic point for the delicate souls out there who will wonder why I use […]
3 CommentsInhibitors of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), such as Iressa (gefitinib) and Tarceva (erlotinib) are generally known for being often minimally toxic, oral, targeted therapies that can occasionally produce dramatic and long-lasting responses in a minority of patients and more modest, minor responses or prolonged disease stabilization in a larger proportion of patients. […]
9 CommentsAs I’ve described in a prior post, one of the most consistent findings in the work with the EGFR inhibitors Iressa (gefitinib) and Tarceva (erlotinib) is that never-smokers are far more likely to demonstrate a response and survival benefit than patients who do smoke or did smoke. Here, for instance, is the set of […]
5 CommentsOne of the more common approaches to treating stage IIIA NSCLC with N2 lymph nodes (mediastinal, or mid-chest, on the same side as the primary tumor) is chemotherapy or chemoradiation before surgery. For those who recommend induction therapy (treatment before planned resection), there is a pretty even split between those who recommend chemotherapy alone and […]
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