Lung Cancer / Mesothelioma
Among the key issues in following patients with a history of treated lung cancer is the pattern of recurrence. We need to have a sense of when the risk is highest and where people are more likely to demonstrate new evidence of disease. Fortunately, there are several studies that can help us with these […]
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November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and we need to scrap to ensure that lung cancer gets anything close to the attention it deserves. At my own institution, Swedish Cancer Institute in Seattle, we’re hosting an event on November 13, 2007 from 6 - 7:30 PM that will focus on early stage lung cancer […]
I recently received an e-mail from Cindy Langhorne, another member of the lung cancer community who I had met several years ago at a lung cancer meeting. At that time, she was serving as the Director of the Alliance for Lung Cancer Advocacy, Support, and Education (ALCASE), which ultimately transformed into the current Lung […]
0 CommentsThere’s a general concept out there that chemo is ineffective in treating brain metastases, and in fact, I’ve mentioned it in some comments here in the past. The reasoning behind this is that we know there’s a blood-brain barrier, and we’ve presumed that chemo is blocked from crossing it. But when CT or MRI […]
0 CommentsThroughout multiple discussions of adjuvant chemotherapy, I’ve focused on the traditional approach used in the US and Europe of 3-4 cycles of platinum-based chemo, treating for up to about three months with a rather intensive approach. However, in Japan, they’ve studied the value of a different form of adjuvant treatment, with a drug called […]
0 CommentsPET scans are an important way to discriminate between metabolically active nodules, suggestive of cancer but sometimes representing inflammation or infection, and non-PET-avid lesions that are felt much likely to represent cancer. They are also a cornerstone of “clinical” staging by imaging and patient exam (vs. “pathologic” staging by surgery to clarify where cancer […]
3 CommentsIn a very recent post I provided an introduction to the special case in NSCLC known as a Pancoast tumor, including a historical perspective of how it has evolved from being perceived initially as an untreatable, uniformly fatal diagnosis to a cancer that could be cured with radiation and then surgery in a significant minority of […]
4 CommentsI still need to add a post on the more recent history of managing Pancoast tumors, but I wanted to add an important and potentially relevant bit of information I learned today. I’m attending a small meeting in New York and had the opportunity to talk with some folks from the company that makes Tarceva, OSI Pharmaceuticals, […]
7 CommentsOne subtype of lung cancer that we haven’t specifically talked about is called a Pancoast tumor, named for the doctor who first described them. A Pancoast tumor is a NSCLC that is located in a groove called the superior sulcus (Pancoast tumors are also sometimes referred to as superior sulcus tumors), at the top […]
6 CommentsOne of the more interesting websites that has some interesting tools for making cancer-related predictions is nomograms.org, part of the website for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. A nomogram is similar to the venerable slide rule, the old calculating device, but the important thing to know is that it allows for people to either use a pencil and […]
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