Annals of oncology : official journal of the European Society for Medical Oncology
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Review
Treatment of cancer-associated venous thromboembolism in the age of direct oral anticoagulants.
Anticoagulation for cancer-associated venous thromboembolism (VTE) can be challenging due to complications-including bleeding and potential drug-drug interactions with chemotherapy-associated with vitamin K antagonists and inconvenience of low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH). Direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) could partially overcome these issues, but until recently there were no large clinical trials assessing their efficacy and safety in cancer patients. This review summarizes clinical treatment guidelines, prior clinical and real-world evidence for anticoagulant choice, recent clinical trials assessing DOACs for cancer-associated VTE (i.e. ⋯ For comparison of apixaban versus dalteparin, CARAVAGGIO is ongoing, and preliminary results from ADAM VTE are favorable. This review concludes that DOACs appear to be reasonable alternatives to LMWH for treatment of cancer-associated VTE. In patients with gastrointestinal cancer, DOAC use should be considered on a case-by-case basis with consideration of the relative risks and benefits.
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Multicenter Study
De-escalated therapy for HR+/HER2+ breast cancer patients with Ki67 response after 2-week letrozole: results of the PerELISA neoadjuvant study.
In human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2+) breast cancers, neoadjuvant trials of chemotherapy plus anti-HER2 treatment consistently showed lower pathologic complete response (pCR) rates in hormone receptor (HR) positive versus negative tumors. The PerELISA study was aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a de-escalated, chemotherapy-free neoadjuvant regimen in HR+/HER2+ breast cancer patients selected on the basis of Ki67 inhibition after 2-week letrozole. ⋯ NCT02411344.
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Early-stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) evades detection when the primary tumor is hidden from view on endoscopic examination. Therefore, in a prospective study of subjects being screened for NPC using plasma Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA, we conducted a study to investigate whether magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could detect endoscopically occult NPC. ⋯ MRI has a complementary role to play in NPC detection and can enable the earlier detection of endoscopically occult NPC.