The Food and Drug Administration has approved an oral formulation of Aloxi® (palonosetron) to prevent nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy.  A single 5 milligram capsule reduces the risk of nausea during the first 24 hours after chemotherapy and for up to five days afterwards.  The medicine is taken about an hour before chemotherapy starts. Read the rest of this entry »

Occasionally people having CT scans or other imaging exams will have an allergic-type reaction to the iodine contrast, but research has found that they can be treated safely without long term effects. In fact, almost all reactions are mild and more han 99 percent patients with them will get better within a day.

Radiologists at the University of Michigan hospitals in Ann Arbor studied nearly 85,000 intravenous injections of nonionic iodinated contrast media looking for allergic-type reactions.  They analyzed both how the reactions were treated and whether there were any long term problems after a reaction. Read the rest of this entry »

An immediate switch from 5-FU treatment to Xeloda® (capecitabine) for stage III colon cancer caused so much toxicity that a trial designed to test patient preferences for treatment had to be stopped.

Patients in the Patient Preference in Adjuvant Therapy (PACT) trial who switched after 6 weeks from weekly 5-FU with leucovorin to oral capecitabine experienced excessive side effects. The trial was designed to determine which approach to treatment patients liked best. Read the rest of this entry »

Cancer treatment can make it hard to eat.  Both chemotherapy and radiation treatment can cause mouth sores, dry mouth, or poor appetite. Some patients develop thrush, a fungus infection in their mouths and throats, that makes swallowing very painful.

Traditionally canned or powdered nutritional supplement drinks like Ensure® or Boost® have been used to provide support to patients who are having trouble eating during treatment.

As an alternative, soft whip ice cream machines were installed on oncology wards in a hospital in the United Kingdom.  The machines served a premium ice cream which had comparable protein to the nutritional drinks. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly all patients who are treated with Vectibix™ (panitumumab) will develop an itchy skin rash that looks something like acne.  However, treating the rash preemptively  before it appears reduces its severity and lengthens the time before more serious rash appears.

During the STEPP (Skin Toxicity Evaluation Protocol with Panitumumab) trial, researchers randomized patients who were being treated with Vectibix to either preemptive skin rash management at the beginning of chemotherapy or reactive treatment once rash appeared.  After six weeks, 70 percent of patients treated preemptively had not developed grade 2 skin rash.  Sixty-two percent of the reactive group already had rash that was grade 2 or higher. Read the rest of this entry »