ASCO 2015 Highlights

San Francisco, CA—According to a study from the US Oncology Network, patients with breast cancer who are treated with adjuvant chemotherapy have no increased risk for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), at least within the first 3 years of treatment.

San Francisco, CA—Acute care utilization, namely, emergency department visits and hospitalizations, are surprisingly common among patients with early breast cancer, according to a retrospective study using an administrative database in Ontario, Canada.

San Francisco, CA—Three frequently used radiologic tests rarely detect metastases in patients with a new diagnosis of breast cancer and should not be routinely performed, according to a comprehensive literature review presented at the 2012 Breast Cancer Symposium.

In a study of patients who were enrolled in the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results–Medicare database, these utilization patterns led to a cost increase of 63% per patient. The study’s results were reported at the 2012 American Society for Radiation Oncology annual meeting.

In this article we address the final payment rules issued on November 1, 2012, by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Physician Fee Schedule (PFS), and the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System.

Vienna, Austria—The identification of genetic mutations and tumor biomarkers to select the right drug for the right patient are not enough to satisfy the need for personalized cancer care, according to Kathy Redmond, MSc, RN, Editor of Cancer World magazine, a publication of the European School of Oncology and former president of the European Oncology Nursing Society, who addressed the topic of personalized medicine at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress.

Phoenix, AZ—Using the paradigm of individualizing drug therapy based on a patient’s genetics, a group of oncologists and genomic experts have designed a genomic prescribing system that they hope will significantly reduce the staggeringly high rate of adverse drug reactions associated with prescription drugs in the United States.

With the fanfare of a New York Times Op-Ed piece by Peter B. Bach, MD, and colleagues, the announcement was made that Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) would exclude the new colorectal cancer drug ziv-aflibercept (Zaltrap) from its formulary.

The cost of cancer care is staggering. Global sales of cancer drugs alone are forecast to grow at a rate of 12% to 15% annually, reaching $75 billion to $80 billion by the end of this year, according to IMS Health.