Articles

Delirium is an exceedingly prevalent syndrome among patients with cancer, but is underrecognized and undertreated, according to Alan Valentine, MD, Chair, Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and Darryl Etter, PsyD, Clinical Psychologist, VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System, Denver, at a webinar hosted by the American Psychosocial Oncology Society in July 2016.

San Francisco, CA—As a result of recent advances in therapy, indications for stem-cell transplant are expanding, along with the number of patients eligible for the procedure. However, the intense and cure-oriented nature of transplants can lead to various forms of distress in patients who undergo this treatment, said Christina K. Ullrich, MD, MPH, Pediatric Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, at the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—In addition to being costly for public and private payers, hospital readmissions can lead to increased risk for complications, hospital-acquired infections, and psychological distress in patients with advanced cancer. Although preventing readmissions would improve patient outcomes and decrease healthcare costs, the underlying causes of rehospitalization are not completely understood, suggested Robin L. Whitney, RN, PhD, Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, University of California, Davis, and colleagues in a poster presentation at the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium.

New York, NY—Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) include myelofibrosis, polycythemia vera, and essential thrombocytopenia, and affect an estimated 295,00 individuals in the United States. MPNs represent a diverse array of diseases. This has led to the generation of various treatment guidelines that are often contradictory and difficult to interpret. However, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) is developing a unified field theory on the diagnosis and treatment of MPNs.

New York, NY—How to integrate the many new drugs recently approved for multiple myeloma into clinical practice was a topic addressed by Carol Ann Huff, MD, Director of the Myeloma Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, at the 2016 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Congress on Hematologic Malignancies.

New York, NY—In a presentation at the 2016 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Congress on Hematologic Malignancies, Ranjana H. Advani, MD, Saul Rosenberg Professor of Lymphoma, Stanford University Medical Center, CA, and Vice Chair of the NCCN’s non-Hodgkin and Hodg­kin lymphoma guidelines panel questioned the necessity of using radiotherapy in patients with stage I or stage II Hodgkin lymphoma.

New York, NY—Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was a hot topic at the 2016 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Congress on Hematologic Malignancies. Jessica K. Altman, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, assured attendees that time was not standing still for patients with AML.

Copenhagen, Denmark—The current standard for the first-line targeted treatment of metastatic renal-cell carcinoma (RCC) came out on the short end of a randomized comparison with the new multikinase inhibitor cabozantinib (Cabometyx), according to results reported at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress.

Copenhagen, Denmark—For the first time, a randomized clinical trial has shown that adjuvant therapy improves outcomes in patients with clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma (RCC). Adjuvant treatment with sunitinib (Sutent) improved disease-free survival (DFS) by >1 year in patients with high-risk locoregional RCC after nephrectomy, according to results from the S-TRAC clinical trial. Although this is encouraging news, at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress some experts noted they were not ready to adopt it as a new standard of care, because of the associated toxicity and lack of an overall survival benefit.

Copenhagen, Denmark—Immunotherapy for advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) took a step toward first-line indication as results from a randomized clinical trial showed that patients who received pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus chemotherapy had a significantly higher response rate compared with patients who received chemotherapy alone, reported Corey J. Langer, MD, Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress. The clinical trial results (KEYNOTE-021) were also published in Lancet Oncology, and are available online.