Articles

Preliminary data from the phase 2 PACE (Ponatinib Ph+ALL and CML Evaluation) trial show that ponatinib (Ariad Pharmaceuticals) can overcome the difficult-to-treat T315I mutation in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML).

A large, ongoing Canadian study provides an overview of the cost of managing non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). “Our study provides total and stage-specific cost estimates for NHL, where attributable costs were 3- to 7-fold higher than those for non-NHL controls, and increased by stage,” said Pierre K. Isogai, BSc, of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.

Instituting guidelines-based test ordering could lead to more effective, accurate, and complete diagnosis and monitoring of hematolymphoid malignancies, while reducing costs, according to hematopathologists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, who said that tests were frequently overordered by their hematologists.

A new cost analysis of the management of the 3 subtypes of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs)—myelofibrosis, polycythemia vera, and essential thrombocythemia—shows that associated medical and pharmaceutical expenses for patients with these hematologic disorders in patients with cancer are 2 to 6 times that of matched patients without cancer.

San Francisco, CA—A serum-based enzyme immunoassay using the PAM4 antibody, combined with the serum marker CA19-9, detected stage I pancreatic cancer in nearly two thirds of patients analyzed in a study presented at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—The novel tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) regorafenib, used as a single agent to treat treatment-refractory metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC), significantly improved survival and delayed disease progression in an international phase 3 trial presented at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

>San Francisco, CA—The “eradication” of colorectal cancer (CRC) may be a step closer, based on promising data for stool DNA testing, said David A. Ahlquist, MD, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

I never thought it would happen in the United States, but it has. We are critically close to running out of some chemotherapy drugs. It came as a shock to all of us, when we realized how severely the problem of drug shortages has started to affect our patients. The following case is but one example.

On November 30, 2011, the Office of the Inspector Gen­eral (OIG) of the US Depart­ment of Health and Human Services issued an advisory opinion (No. 11-18) to the web-based physician practice service provider athenahealth, tacitly approving the company’s new online service athenaCoordinator.