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Cancer Patients Should Ask Doctors to Use Simple Terms

Posted 28 Sep 2011 by Drugs.com

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 28 – Cancer patients are often faced with many difficult-to-understand treatment choices that can have serious side effects and even mean the difference between life and death. That's why it's crucial that patients insist doctors use plain language in explaining the options, advised Angela Fagerlin, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and a researcher at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center. "People are making life and death decisions that may affect their survival and they need to know what they're getting themselves into. Cancer treatments and tests can be serious. Patients need to know what kind of side effects they might experience as a result of the treatment they undergo," Fagerlin said in a university news release. She and her colleagues outlined a number of tips to help patients get the information they need ... Read more

Taking Chemo Drug Continuously Delayed Lung Cancer's Return

Posted 6 Jun 2011 by Drugs.com

SUNDAY, June 5 – While most patients with advanced lung cancer only take four courses of two chemotherapy drugs and then stop until recurrence occurs, continuing treatment with one of those drugs may delay return of the deadly disease, new research suggests. The results are preliminary, but Spanish scientists report that staying on Alimta (pemextrexed) delayed recurrence of the disease. "This is the first trial with what looks like a positive outcome where you continue the same treatment," said Dr. Neal Ready, a professor of medicine at the Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, N.C. "All the other positive trials in the past switched chemotherapy regimens, so this is a true 'maintenance' approach" in that doctors maintained the patients on the same drug. Although overall survival data is not yet in, "if it all bears out and that looks good, this would influence medical oncologists to ... Read more

Related support groups: Lung Cancer, Alimta

New Drug May Offer Hope to Some With Lung Cancer

Posted 2 Feb 2010 by Drugs.com

SATURDAY, Sept. 19 – Maintenance therapy with the drug pemetrexed improves the survival of people with non-small-cell lung cancer whose disease has not progressed after chemotherapy, a new study has found. Nearly 90 percent of all people who die from lung cancer have non-small-cell tumors. At the time the cancer is discovered, it's considered advanced about 40 percent of the time, according to background information in a news release from The Lancet, which is publishing the study. Chemotherapy reduces the tumors in just 40 percent of advanced cases, it said. The phase 3 study included 663 people in 20 countries who had an advanced stage of the cancer but no disease progression after four cycles of platinum-based chemotherapy. They were randomly selected to be given pemetrexed or a placebo in 21-day cycles. The cancers did not progress for 4.3 months, on average, in people in the ... Read more

Related support groups: Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Alimta, Pemetrexed

Drug Trials Show Modest Gains Against Lung Cancer

Posted 30 May 2009 by Drugs.com

SATURDAY, May 30 – Certain drugs offer incremental yet significant improvements in pushing back advanced lung cancer. That's the conclusion of studies presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Orlando, Fla. Lung cancer remains America's leading cancer killer, and "significant" improvements in time-to-disease recurrence and survival are measured in weeks and months, not years, experts stress. The benefits from any drug also vary from patient to patient. "Some patients are benefiting much more and some much less," noted Dr. Roy Herbst, chief of thoracic medical oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and lead author of one of the studies presented at the meeting. In data presented at an ASCO news conference Saturday, researchers found that the drug Alimta (pemetrexed) prolonged survival by almost ... Read more