This week, researchers published a comparison of radiation treatments for nasopharyngeal carcinoma.  This is the kind of study I wish we saw more of.  This is a head-to-head comparison of IMRT and conventional radiotherapy in a (thankfully) uncommon form of throat cancer.

The results were not as strongly in favor of the newer IMRT (intensity-modulated radiotherapy) as I would have expected.  Disease free survival, the simplest outcome to wrap my head around, was a little better, but not enough to show statistical significance.  There is no mention of overall survival, which would have been a nice outcome to track, considering this was a retrospective review.

Thanks to Dr. Ian Taras for this interesting item.  An Israeli company has gotten FDA approval to market a new lung imaging device that works without radiation.  The device evidently uses the vibration of air to image the lung in real time.  The company says the potential uses include imaging in the ICU, and tracking lung cancer.  The device may be targeted to doctors' offices.  Enjoy!

There are not too many drugs that improve overall survival in prostate cancer.  Right now, the list is pretty short: Taxotere.

So the announcement that researchers have survival improvement with a new drug, cabazitaxel, is pretty exciting for us oncologists.

It's easy to become discouraged, but once in a while we get something to be happy about.  Today is one of those moments.

This was in NEJM this week. 

"Ten years after treatment, accelerated, hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation was not inferior to standard radiation treatment in women who had undergone breast-conserving surgery for invasive breast cancer with clear surgical margins and negative axillary nodes."

I comment on radiation and CT scans in an HD video...

I never cease to be amazed by what's out there.  You can spend all day every day checking out "alternati

We have already heard about the osteoporosis that comes along with hormonal treatment for prostate cancer, but now here comes another advisory on potential heart problems as well.

http://www.webmd.com/prostate-cancer/news/20100201/heart-risk-from-prost...

Right now, CT scanners do measure the radiation dose a patient gets, but it's not a number that enters the medical record for permanent logging.

NIH has asked CT scanner makers to give them an interface to the medical record, so they can keep track of the total radiation dose a patient gets with a CT scan.

It's such a simple and good idea, I can't believe nobody ever thought of it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6100TJ20100201

Podcast file: 

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1-26-10.mp3

How aggressive should the chemo for rectal cancer be? A newly published study doesn't make the question any easier.

Publishing in Lancet Oncology, a British group treated patients with a combination of Xeloda and oxaliplatin initially, then Xeloda and radiation, then surgery.

In the 105 patients studied with poor risk disease, recurrences were rare at five years.

How aggressive should the chemo for rectal cancer be? A newly published study doesn't make the question any easier.

Publishing in Lancet Oncology, a British group treated patients with a combination of Xeloda and oxaliplatin initially, then Xeloda and radiation, then surgery.

In the 105 patients studied with poor risk disease, recurrences were rare at five years.