Cancer
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Shared decision-making is an important component of patient-centered care and is associated with improved outcomes. To the authors' knowledge, little is known concerning the extent and predictors of the involvement of a patient's family in decisions regarding cancer treatments. ⋯ The majority of patients with newly diagnosed lung or colorectal cancer involve family members in treatment decisions. Non-English-speaking Asians and Hispanics rely significantly on family. Further studies are needed to determine the impact of family involvement in treatment decisions on outcomes; until then, physicians should consider eliciting patients' preferences for family involvement.
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Review
Bevacizumab and glioblastoma: scientific review, newly reported updates, and ongoing controversies.
Anti-angiogenic therapy for glioblastoma has been in the spotlight for several years, as researchers and clinicians strive to find agents with meaningful efficacy against glioblastoma. Bevacizumab in particular, in the second half of the last decade, became the most significant breakthrough in anti-glioblastoma therapy since temozolomide. ⋯ In addition, uncertainty has recently arisen regarding the effects of bevacizumab on quality of life and neurocognitive function, two key clinical endpoints of unquestionable significance among glioblastoma patients. In this review, we highlight these controversies and other recent work related to bevacizumab for glioblastoma.
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This phase 2 multi-institutional study was designed to determine whether gemcitabine (GEM) with fractionated stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) results in acceptable late grade 2 to 4 gastrointestinal toxicity when compared with a prior trial of GEM with single-fraction SBRT in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC). ⋯ Fractionated SBRT with GEM results in minimal acute and late gastrointestinal toxicity. Future studies should incorporate SBRT with more aggressive multiagent chemotherapy.
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Fludarabine plus busulfan (FB) and fludarabine plus melphalan (FM) are 2 widely used reduced-intensity conditioning (RIC) regimens for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT). ⋯ These results suggest that although FM provides better AML control than FB as an RIC regimen for allo-SCT, the 2 regimens provide similar survival. Multicenter randomized studies are needed to confirm these findings.
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The efficacy of postoperative radiotherapy (PORT) for thymic epithelial tumors is still controversial. Using the Japanese Association for Research on the Thymus (JART) database, this study was aimed at clarifying the efficacy of PORT for Masaoka stage II and III thymic carcinoma and thymoma. ⋯ In this study, PORT did not increase RFS or OS for stage II or III thymoma but increased RFS for stage II and III thymic carcinoma.