Research this week finds that people with severe cancer weight loss get less benefit from fentanyl pain patches and explores why people with Down Syndrome have less cancer.

In other headlines, shut-down of a Canadian nuclear reactor threatens the supply of medical isotopes used in many cancer tests.  Free drug samples may do more harm than good, and CT colonography finds cancers and other serious conditions outside the colon in about 2 or 3 out of 100 tests.  Finally, we provide a link to a Cancer.Net podcast with information about what to expect from your colonoscopy. Read the rest of this entry »

Trying to predict whether or not chemotherapy was working as soon as possible, Swedish doctors compared FDG-PET scanning before beginning chemo and after two treatments.  Then they looked at CT scans after four and eight treatments to see if early PET scans could predict changes in tumor size.

They found that the scans did show which patients would respond to treatments with tumor shrinkage.  Responders had greater reduction in metabolic readings on PET scans than did patients whose tumors didn’t get smaller. But changes in PET values did not predict benefits in either the time until cancer got worse (progression-free interval) or overall survival. Read the rest of this entry »

American Cancer Society Chief Medical Officer Otis W. Brawley, M.D., says that he is disappointed in the decision by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services not to cover CT colonography screening for elderly Americans on Medicare.

Dr. Brawley points out that randomized clinical trials have shown the CTC option as effective as traditional optical colonoscopy in finding early cancers and precancerous polyps.  He also concerned that there is not a sufficient supply of trained specialists providing colonoscopy to meet the need for screening and that new options are needed.

The American Cancer Society believes, Brawley says, that a full battery of testing for colorectal cancer screening should be available, particularly to the Medicare population who are at higher risk of developing and dying from colorectal cancer. Read the rest of this entry »

Elderly people whose health care is covered by Medicare report fewer problems and higher satisfaction with their care than younger patients whose health insurance is provided by their employers. Although the older Medicare beneficiaries have lower incomes and poorer health than the employer-covered group, they reported less difficulty paying their bills, fewer problems finding medical care, and higher overall satisfaction with that care.

Information comes from an analysis of the Commonwealth Fund 2007 Biennial Health Insurance Survey, a nationally representative telephone survey of 3,501 adults age nineteen and older living in United States.   Even counting those who refused to participate and those who could not be reached by phone, the survey’s response rate was almost 50 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

Five years after surgery, there was no improvement in either disease-free survival or overall survival when irinotecan was added to standard 5-FU treatments delivered via continous infusion for patients with stage III colon cancer.  Adding irinotecan increased the rate of serious side effects.

The PETACC-3  (Pan European Trial Adjuvant Colon Cancer)  trial was designed to see if adding irinotecan to 5-FU and leucovorin could increase the percentage of stage III patients who were alive and cancer-free (disease-free survival).  It also studied overall survival and relapse-free survival. Read the rest of this entry »