Here’s a webinar case discussion I did with Drs. Julie Brahmer from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and Greg Riely from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. They’re great thoracic oncologists as wellas friends, and they were kind enough to join me for discussion of several complex cases that don’t have clear answers and illustrate the reality that even when we know the evidence, there’s plenty of room for judgment.
Our first case is about a 63 year-old woman who has a poorly differentiated NSCLC that is just outside of the range we’d feel feasible for radiating, and it brings up issues related to trying to integrate chemo and possible radiation, the debatable role of agents like Avastin (bevacizumab) and Alimta (pemetrexed) for cancers that are hard to classify, and then how we approach managing patients who have responded well — observation or maintenance?
Here is the audio and video versions of the podcast, along with the associated transcript and figures.
rt-brahmer-riely-webinar-case-1-audio-podcast
rt-brahmer-riely-webinar-case-1-transcript
rt-brahmer-riely-webinar-case-1-figures
My thanks go out again to Drs. Brahmer and Riely for their time and thoughtful comments. You’ll hear more from them about a couple of additional cases in the next few weeks.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Related posts:





Posted on March 10, 2010 at 9:06 am
Dr. West,
This was very informative and sounded a bit familiar with my case. Not identical but close enough. It has created a question though. In a lot of my reading whenever poorly differentiated cancer is discussed it is usually mentioned that the type is unknown. Does that mean that an identified adenocarcinoma really can’t be poorly differentiated because it was able to be identified? Or can it go either way. I’ll get this histology stuff down yet. Thanks. –mikem