Get help managing the financial costs of your cancer care from an ASCO booklet or figure out how to deal with the Medicare prescription doughnut hole using an AARP online calculator.

In research, Lynch syndrome women have excellent survival after ovarian cancer, older patients have similar effectiveness and side effects from Avastin, and parents with advanced cancer often underestimate how upset their children are.  Long-term cancer survivors have no more depression than people without cancer. Read the rest of this entry »

Briefs are back this week after a couple of weeks off for the ASCO meeting, and we review research that finds small liver mets don’t affect survival after treatment for peritoneal carcinomatosis.  A gene has been found  that’s necessary for Celebrex to control new colon polyps.

In other headlines, chimps don’t get cancer but aren’t as smart as humans, a new clinical trial is underway for people with KRAS mutant tumors, and a subcommittee of the House Veterans Affairs Committee will be holding hearings to investigate infections from poorly sanitized colonoscopes in VA medical centers.

Two helpful publications are available online:  One provides help understanding medical abstracts; the other is an advocate’s guide to negotiating Medicare Part D appeals. Read the rest of this entry »