A study from Memorial Sloan Kettering recently showed that patients who have stage IV disease, which means spread to other organs, don’t need to undergo surgery immediately. If the tumor does not cause problems such as obstruction or bleeding, patients appear to do better to start with chemotherapy right away without delay because of the surgery. Read the rest of this entry »

For years we have known that alcohol consumption is one of the risk factors in developing colon cancer particular in women. This week an interesting article was published by Dr. Christopher Forsyth from Rush University Medical Center suggesting that if you have colon cancer and you drink alcohol that colon cancer may spread easier. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the questions I often get is if colon cancer has traveled to the liver is it then liver cancer or is it still colon cancer.

The answer is very easy. It is still colon cancer but the consequences of it being in the liver or any other organ are getting more and more important. Read the rest of this entry »

Colon cancer has undergone significant changes and has seen increasing treatment options. With more and more drugs available and approved for colon cancer we are facing difficult decisions deciding what is the right treatment at the right time.

For patients with newly diagnosed colon cancer we have two chemotherapeutic regimens: a combination of infusional 5-FU with irinotecan (FOLFIRI) or with oxaliplatin (FOLFOX). Both regimens have shown similar efficacy and similar extent of toxicity however there are differences in the quality of toxicity.  More often FOLFOX has to be stopped because of its neurotoxicity than because it stopped working. Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry but today I am also getting into new and very difficult data to discuss but wanted to give it a shot since you may surf the Net and come across data which are shown to be negative leading to some stress if you are on similar or same therapy.

I attended the European Meeting for Medical Oncology in Berlin two weeks ago, and some new data were presented. Let’s start with the good news which is consistent with all the data we have. In a large randomized phase III trial called CRYSTAL comparing FOLFIRI with or without Erbitux® (cetuximab), the data showed that in patients with wild-type KRAS response rate went up to 60% and time to tumor progression increased about 30% but, so far no overall survival benefit was shown.  The trial was criticized for that. Read the rest of this entry »