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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
Related support groups: Cancer, Methotrexate, Provera, Breast Cancer, Lupron, Accutane, Depo-Provera, Prostate Cancer, Tamoxifen, Femara, Arimidex, Lupron Depot, Medroxyprogesterone, Claravis, Gleevec
Chemo for Late-Stage Cancer Patients May Be Unjustified
Posted 9 Jun 2011 by Drugs.com
THURSDAY, June 9 – Some patients with advanced cancer receive drugs that won't help them but could cause them harm, a U.S. study suggests. University of Chicago researchers analyzed medical and pharmaceutical claims from 1,041 patients with metastatic colon cancer who were treated between January 2007 and June 2010. Of those patients, about one in eight received chemotherapy treatments that weren't supported by evidence from clinical trials or by clinical practice guidelines. The researchers focused on three specific treatments. One had insufficient data to support its use, one had been shown to be ineffective, and one was not supported by data or a compelling rationale, according to the study. The treatment with insufficient data involved the use of Avastin (bevacizumab) after a patient's cancer had progressed despite treatment with a combination of the drug and chemotherapy. The ... Read more
Fingerprints May Vanish With Cancer Drug
Posted 27 May 2009 by Drugs.com
WEDNESDAY, May 27 – The widely used cancer drug capecitabine can cause people to lose their fingerprints, which could lead to problems when they're trying to enter the United States, an oncologist warns. Dr. Eng-Huat Tan, a senior consultant in medical oncology at the National Cancer Centre in Singapore, said he now advises people taking capecitabine to carry a doctor's letter when traveling. In a letter published online Wednesday in the Annals of Oncology, Tan described the experience of a 62-year-old cancer patient taking capecitabine who was held for four hours by U.S. immigration officials because his fingerprints had vanished. The man was eventually allowed into the country. Tan said that several other cancer patients have reported the loss of fingerprints on their blog sites and some have also said they've had problems entering the United States. Capecitabine – used to treat ... Read more
Related support groups: Xeloda
Chemotherapy Superior to New Drug for Early Breast Cancer
Posted 13 May 2009 by Drugs.com
WEDNESDAY, May 13 – Older women with early-stage breast cancer do better after standard chemotherapy than they do with the oral drug capecitabine (Xeloda), a new study finds. "After three years, 85 percent of people who received chemotherapy were doing well, and 68 percent of people who received capecitabine were doing well," said lead researcher Dr. Hyman Muss, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "In this trial, we had hoped that it [capecitabine] would be as good as standard therapy, so we would have a pill treatment with less side effects, but it turned out it wasn't as good," Muss said. The report is published in the May 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Because it has fewer side effects, capecitabine has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in patients with advanced breast and colon cancer. Used in ... Read more
Related support groups: Breast Cancer, Xeloda
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Stomach Cancer, Colorectal Cancer, Pancreatic Cancer, Breast Cancer, Metastatic, Breast Cancer, Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Renal Cell Carcinoma