Articles

At the Fifth Annual Conference of the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care in Washington, DC, Grant Lawless, RPh, MD, FACP, of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, moderated a multidisciplinary panel on value-based care for patients with multiple myeloma.

An assay that measures circulating tumor (ct) DNA in the urine can detect mutations in patients with a variety of advanced cancers, according to a recent study.

Boston, MA—Delivering the keynote lecture at the 2015 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, Howard L. McLeod, PharmD, Medical Director of the DeBartolo Family Personalized Medicine Institute at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL, discussed advances in personalized medicine as they relate to palliative care, as well as the continuing challenges in cancer care.

Boston, MA—A new guidance statement from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) provides the first formal, consensus-based recommendations regarding high-quality primary palliative care in oncology, according to Kathleen E. Bickel, MD, MPhil, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH.

Washington, DC—The COME HOME initiative, a 7-member oncology medical home practice partnership, has documented significant reductions in hospitalization rates, inpatient days, and total cost of care of approximately $5 million over a 6-month period, said Barbara L. McAneny, MD, at the Fifth Annual Conference of the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care.

San Antonio, TX—A genomic classifier is now available that can predict a low or high risk for metastasis in men with prostate cancer who have rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) after a prostatectomy. The good news is that this test is reimbursable by Medicare.

Boston, MA—Family- and patient-related factors were identified as the most significant barriers to early end-of-life discussions, as well as to the timely discontinuation of cancer-directed therapies in the palliative setting, according to the results of a multicenter survey of oncologists in Ontario, Canada.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of premature death in women. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), more than 40,000 US women will die of breast cancer in 2015.