An analysis revealed palliative care discussions do not happen until late in the illness trajectory. Further, the review revealed actual palliative care does not begin until close to time of death.
Recently, melatonin and its potential benefits in cancer and chemotherapy have been discussed in varying publications. However, it is unclear how many individuals may be using it to promote sleep or for other health reasons such as an adjunctive therapy in cancer treatment.
In a trial comparing chemotherapy alone to chemotherapy plus bevacizumab in the treatment of patients with platinium-resistant ovarian cancer, the combination resulted in improved response rates and progression-free survival (PFS) and without a high rate of added toxicity. Whether bevacizumab alone would provide comparable improvements was not assessed but remains an important question for future trials.
Breast cancer survivors participating in a 12-week yoga program reported decreased fatigue, increased vitality, and improved sleep on multiple scoring systems, but no impact on depressive symptoms. Increased time spent doing yoga led to greater improvements in inflammation, mood, and fatigue.
In an international, randomized, non-inferiority trial, bendamustine-rituximab proved comparable in overall response rate when compared with R-CHOP or R-CVP in the management of indolent NHL and mantle cell lymphoma. Progression free and overall survival comparisons remain to be determined. Notably, toxicity profiles were significantly different, with higher rates of reported nausea and vomiting with BR and neuropathy and alopecia with R-CHOP/R-CVP.
In this pooled analysis of more than 7700 ovarian cancer patients and nearly 12,000 controls, low dose aspirin and high dose non-aspirin NSAID use was associated with a risk reduction for invasive epithelial ovarian cancer of 20 to 34% relative to non-users.
Synopsis: In this study, the authors evaluated and refined previously published risk stratification for locoregional failure (LF) by applying it to a multicenter patient cohort.
After a median follow-up of 5 years, the aromatase inhibitor, anastrozole decreased the incidence of breast cancer in high-risk postmenopausal women by 53% compared to women receiving a placebo.
In a nested, case-control analysis using a large computerized clinical dataset, a 16% reduction in colorectal cancer incidence was observed after 3 or more years of angiotensin inhibitor and/or angiotensin receptor blocker treatment of hypertension.
For patients with BRCA-associated breast cancer, it had been previously demonstrated that a second breast cancer occurs in approximately one-third of patients by 15 years after diagnosis, and that this risk was reduced significantly by contralateral mastectomy.
