Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer
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Support Care Cancer · Mar 2016
ReviewInterventional options for the management of refractory cancer pain-what is the evidence?
Pain is the most common symptom in cancer patients. Standard pain treatment according to the WHO three-step analgesic ladder provides effective pain management in approximately 70-90% of cancer patients. Refractory pain is defined as not responding to "standard" treatments. Interventional analgesic techniques can be used in an attempt to control refractory pain in patients in whom conventional analgesic strategies fail to provide effective pain relief or are intolerable due to severe adverse effects. This systematic review aims to provide the latest evidence on interventional refractory pain management in cancer patients. ⋯ Overall, very few RCTs have been conducted on interventional pain techniques. In reality, it is very difficult to undertake large controlled trials for a number of reasons. Therefore, today's best evidence for practice may be from large case series of comparable patients with careful response and toxicity evaluation and follow-up.
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Support Care Cancer · Mar 2016
Multicenter StudyPresentation patterns and outcomes of patients with cancer accessing care in emergency departments in Victoria, Australia.
People with cancer attend emergency departments (EDs) for many reasons. Improved understanding of the specific needs of these patients may assist in optimizing health service delivery. ED presentation and hospital utilization characteristics were explored for people with cancer and compared with those patients without cancer. ⋯ ED presentations by people with cancer represent a more urgent, complex caseload frequently requiring hospital admission when compared to other presentations, suggesting that for optimal cancer care, close collaboration and integration of oncology, palliative care and emergency medicine providers are needed to improve pathways of care.
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Support Care Cancer · Mar 2016
Randomized Controlled TrialMC11C4: a pilot randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study of venlafaxine to prevent oxaliplatin-induced neuropathy.
Previous pilot data suggested that venlafaxine could prevent acute and chronic oxaliplatin-related neuropathy. The purpose of this randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded pilot study was to obtain additional data to support conducting a phase III trial to test the use of venlafaxine to prevent oxaliplatin neurotoxicity. ⋯ The present study neither supports the use of venlafaxine for preventing oxaliplatin-induced neuropathy in clinical practice nor the initiation of a phase III trial to investigate venlafaxine in this setting.
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Support Care Cancer · Mar 2016
Randomized Controlled TrialPhase II randomized, controlled trial of 1 day versus 3 days of dexamethasone combined with palonosetron and aprepitant to prevent nausea and vomiting in Japanese breast cancer patients receiving anthracycline-based chemotherapy.
Dexamethasone, plus a 5-HT3 receptor antagonist and an NK-1 receptor antagonist are recommended for controlling the chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) of highly emetogenic chemotherapy. Several days of dexamethasone are effective for CINV; however, dexamethasone also has side effects. The purpose of this trial was to investigate whether the use of a second-generation 5-HT3 receptor antagonist and an NK-1 receptor antagonist could allow a reduced dose of dexamethasone for breast cancer patients receiving highly emetogenic chemotherapy. ⋯ The results suggest that the antiemetic effect provided by dexamethasone administered for 3 days can be obtained by dexamethasone administered for 1 day.
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Support Care Cancer · Mar 2016
Differences of symptoms in head and neck cancer patients with and without lymphedema.
Head and neck cancer (HNC) patients are at risk for developing external and internal lymphedema. Currently, no documentation of symptom differences between individuals with and without head and neck lymphedema is available. The purpose of this analysis was to examine symptom differences among HNC patients with and without lymphedema. ⋯ Findings suggest that HNC-related lymphedema may be associated with substantial symptom burden. Studies with larger sample sizes are needed to replicate the findings.