Gan to kagaku ryoho. Cancer & chemotherapy
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Gan To Kagaku Ryoho · Dec 2005
Case Reports[Peritoneal dissemination from gastrointestinal stromal tumor of small intestine responding completely to imatinib mesylate (STI 571)].
The prognosis of metastatic or recurrent GISTs is poor, because these tumors resist chemotherapy and radiotherapy. We report a patient with recurrent GIST who underwent molecularly targeted therapy with imatinib, a novel oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor. A 64-year-old man presented with large intra-abdominal mass. ⋯ Computed tomographic scanning at 11 months revealed that the tumor had completely disappeared. The major side effect was drug eruption,which was easily manageable with 2 weeks drug holidays. Imatinib shows promise as a safe and effective drug for the treatment of patients with recurrent GISTs.
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Gan To Kagaku Ryoho · Dec 2005
Case Reports[A case report of a terminally ill patient who died of cancer at home under pain control].
Ninety percent of patients we handle at our visiting nurse group are last stage cancer patients. We report a terminally ill cancer patient who died at home under a high dose of powerful opioids to control pain. The patient was a 69-year-old woman with colorectal cancer. ⋯ We increased the frequency of home visits and telephone calls in order to give medical and spiritual support for both the patient and her family. As a result, we could keep the patient's good QOL up to the time of her death. Based on the experiences through taking care of the patient, we strongly felt that the timing of proper guidance for the peaceful death to the family, a communication method or a communication system and telephone call visits were very important, in addition to controlling the condition of illness in order to keep up a good QOL for both the patient and her family.
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Gan To Kagaku Ryoho · Dec 2005
[Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma].
To evaluate the results of high-dose chemotherapy (HDT) and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (ASCT) in patients with diffuse B-cell aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma(NHL). Between 1991 and 2004, 25 patients who did not achieve complete remission and 26 in complete remission from conventional chemotherapy received HDC-ASCT. Of 25 patients with refractory NHL,14 were chemotherapy-sensitive before HDT-ASCT and 11 were chemotherapy-resistant. ⋯ The 5-year probability of disease-free survival for patients in the low-risk group and in the high-risk group was 68.8% and 60.0%,respectively (p = 0.9 6). HDT-ASCT should be considered for patients at high risk who achieve complete remission after induction treatment. In future, HDT-ASCT combined with rituximab as induction therapy or as consolidation therapy is needed for patients with aggressive NHL in the high-risk group.