Cancer
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Virtually all patients with prostate cancer who receive androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) will ultimately develop evidence of resistance to treatment. The prognosis for patients who develop metastatic castrate-resistant disease is reported to be poor, with overall survival historically estimated to be 24 to 36 months. The goal of the current study was to identify predictors of clinical disease progression in patients with prostate cancer who were receiving ADT. ⋯ Younger men with high-risk disease appear to have worse prognosis than older men with similar disease. This, along with the other prognostic variables established in the current study, may help identify candidates for clinical trials evaluating secondary treatments for patients with castrate-resistant disease.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Randomized phase 2 study of concomitant chemoradiotherapy using weekly carboplatin/paclitaxel with or without daily subcutaneous amifostine in patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer.
A randomized phase 2 study was performed to investigate the efficacy/toxicity of combining concomitant boost radiation and weekly carboplatin/paclitaxel with or without amifostine in patients with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN). ⋯ Four weekly doses of carboplatin/paclitaxel with concomitant boost radiation was found to be a highly effective regimen in this patient population with advanced SCCHN. The overall survival rate was 89%. The time to percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy removal was prolonged. Amifostine given subcutaneously did not improve the rates of xerostomia and mucositis with this fairly intensive chemoradiotherapy regimen.
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Good parent-child communication is thought to help families adjust more easily during stressful events such as parental cancer. Families dealing with cancer who communicate openly have reported less psychological distress. The first year after diagnosis may be particularly stressful. The authors investigated parents' quality of life (QOL) and stress-response symptoms and parent-child communication during the first year after diagnosis and examined possible relationships between communication and parents' functioning. ⋯ Communication between parents and children remained stable over time; patients' and spouses' functioning improved. Parent-child communication seems to have a limited affect on parents' functioning.
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Previous research from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) has shown that risk of skin cancer is strongly associated with exposure to radiation therapy. The potential role of ultraviolet radiation exposure in survivors has not been described. ⋯ Survivors of childhood cancer self-reported lower tanning practices than siblings. However, because of the potential increased risk of skin cancer from therapy-related exposures, future research should be directed at intervention studies to further reduce UV exposures.
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The objective of this study was to identify the factors associated with improved outcome after treatment for stage III nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). ⋯ In this retrospective series, those patients who were able to undergo resection appeared to have improved outcome after induction CRT.