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A topic that came up in a recent expert round table case discussion was the issue of how to manage a patient with a lung cancer for which the pathology report says “NSCLC not otherwise specified (NOS)”, or “poorly differentiated NSCLC, NOS”. What does this actually mean, and what does it mean in terms of [...]
2 CommentsThis is part 2 of my round table case discussion with Dr. Anne Tsao, a medical oncologist and thoracic oncology expert from MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and Dr. Alex Farivar, a thoracic surgeon with expert training in mesothelioma at Swedish Cancer Institute in Seattle. This particular case covers a patient with a mesothelioma, [...]
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0 CommentsJust a few days ago, I described my humbling experience of trying to argue in favor of making a standard of patients with advanced NSCLC who hadn’t progressed after four cycles of chemo-based first line treatment being started on maintenance therapy. That didn’t work, and it’s clear both from the outcome of the debate, [...]
9 CommentsBrain metastases from NSCLC is almost a field of its own. This is because of the relatively high frequency with which metastases appear, the fact that they may return, even after treatment with whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT), and that our chemotherapy has long been considered to be ineffective against them. In fact, the [...]
9 CommentsFor many years, chemotherapy for advanced or metastatic NSCLC had been limited to the use of “doublet” (two-drug) therapy using different combination regimens that were overall found to have very similar outcomes, but with different toxicity (side effect) profiles. Attempts to add a third chemotherapy agent for a triplet regimen, and numerous attempts to add [...]
6 CommentsOver the past several months the topic of so-called maintenance therapy in advanced NSCLC has been one of the most timely and controversy questions in lung cancer. We’ve had posts here covering a trial testing immediate vs. delayed taxotere (docetaxel), the updated results of the maintenance alimta (pemetrexed) trial, the SATURN trial of maintenance [...]
3 CommentsAt ASCO a little over a month ago we learned the preliminary results of the SATURN trial that compared “maintenance” Tarceva (erlotinib), the oral EGFR inhibitor, to an oral placebo in patients who showed no progression after four cycles of first line chemotherapy. The results of the ASCO presentation, which showed a statistically significant [...]
2 Comments Maintenance therapy for advanced non-small cell lung cancer was certainly the big theme this year in the lung cancer presentations. Let’s start with the Alimta data. Dr. West has outlined earlier results of this study after this data was presented at the 2008 ASCO meeting.
First, a little background on the study: patients with [...]
The ASCO meeting I’m at right now is so busy that there really isn’t time to write a new post (though I’m still “tweeting from the meeting”). Though the talk show hows just air re-runs of old shows when they’re on vacation, I’m trying to continue to add new content to the website during [...]
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0 CommentsThe ASCO meeting I’m at right now is so insanely busy during the days and nights that it’s next to impossible to carve out the time to write posts during the meeting. While the talk show hosts just show re-runs while they’re on vacation, we’re at least going to put up some new content, [...]
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