Lung Cancer / Mesothelioma
There’s a website called Adjuvant! Online, developed by oncologist Peter Ravdin, that is best known for its use after surgery for breast cancer in assessing the value of post-operative chemo. Because I don’t really treat breast cancer, I haven’t spent time on the website, but I do know that it’s a valued resource among practicing oncologists who […]
0 CommentsThe antibody to the epidermal growth factor receptor erbitux (cetuximab) (introductory post here) has been used as an effective treatment for colon and also head and neck cancer for several years, but its role in lung cancer has yet to be defined. Early work in lung cancer was not especially impressive (prior post here), but […]
0 CommentsThis bit of news slipped under the radar for the past six weeks, but oral topotecan was approved by the FDA for the treatment of SCLC that has recurred at least 45 days after the last chemotherapy had been given. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I hadn’t noted this, but it really […]
0 CommentsAlthough I’ve previously written about the question about optimal duration of therapy for first-line chemotherapy in advanced NSCLC (post here), these conclusions have been based on a limited number of trials. One study randomized patients to three or six cycles of rather old chemo and found no significant differences (abstract here). Another more recent […]
4 CommentsThis week, the US FDA made a public announcement to alert the public that it had received reports of several patient deaths from the technique of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) to lung tumors. This is an investigational technique that I described in a prior post, after several members asked about RFA. I made the point […]
0 CommentsAn interesting article just came out in the Journal of Clinical Oncology from researchers at Duke, led by Dr. Ed Patz of the Radiology Department there (abstract here). Recognizing the problems with detection of lung cancer (LC) based on symptoms (which detects LC far too late) or screening CTs (which detects early LC but also many […]
0 CommentsWhile there is a lot of variability in the clinical behavior of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma (BAC), there are some commonly observed findings that are now leading lung cancer experts to consider it as a distinct clinical entity worthy of special consideration for management. Among the important areas for potentially special clinical management is in surgical management of […]
0 CommentsI had previously written about a spectrum from pure bronchioloalveolar carcinoma (BAC) to invasive adenocarcinoma in one of my first posts here, but the real credit for this concept goes back to Dr. Masayuki Noguchi from the National Cancer Center Hospital in Tokyo, Japan, who characterized a classification system for peripheral lung adenocarcinomas back […]
1 CommentsRashes from EGFR inhibitors: we like to see them, because we know that many trials have shown that skin toxicity on drugs like tarceva is associated with better survival (see prior post), but the fact is that sometimes a rash is more than an inconvenience and can really make people miserable, or at least […]
14 CommentsAs I’ve mentioned in some prior posts, there is increasing recognition that lung cancer in never-smokers may be a different disease. Some of this has been defined by working backward from treatment results, where we’ve seen that never-smokers are consistently among the greatest beneficiaries of EGFR inhibitor therapies like Iressa or Tarceva. But there […]
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