Cancer

A case of angiotropic large cell lymphoma presenting in large blood vessels as superior vena cava syndrome is presented. The discussion focuses on aspects of a particular predilection for the intravascular space in this unusual presentation.

In this randomized controlled trial, adjuvant doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide chemotherapy showed no survival benefit compared with conventional cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, and 5-fluorouracil in premenopausal women with axillary lymph node positive breast carcinoma.

The detection of lymph node metastases is highly dependent on the sampling methods used to look for them. A computer model of a sentinel lymph node is used to compare the efficacy and cost of various pathologic sampling strategies.

Discordance between histologic and imaging findings occurred in 3.1% of lesions that had percutaneous breast biopsy. Imaging–histologic discordance was shown to be an indication for surgical excision because of the high (24.4%) prevalence of carcinoma in these lesions.

Delayed ¹⁸F-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography scanning at 2 hours postinjection may contribute to differentiation between malignant lesions and benign lesions in the pancreas.

There are many significant differences in the clinicopathologic characteristics between patients with carcinoma of the gastric cardia and those with distal gastric carcinoma in Japan. Obesity, smoking, drinking, Barrett esophagus, or gastroesophageal reflux disease were not related to its occurrence, in contrast to reports in the West.

Patients with gastric carcinoma with high levels of soluble Fas ligand (sFasL) had a worse prognosis than those with low levels. The serum sFasL levels could be a prognostic tumor marker for the assessment of the progression of advanced gastric carcinoma.

This is the first radiation therapy series to specifically and solely analyze outcome of prostate cancer patients with Gleason score 7. This report demonstrates the importance of higher central axis doses (≥ 76 Gy) in treating these patients with definitive three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy.

Low doses of dexamethasone improved anemia, osseous disease, and the serum prostate specific antigen level in patients with hormone-refractory prostate carcinoma. A posttherapy PSA decline of ≥ 50% was found to be associated significantly with improved survival.

Immunohistochemical and molecular methods were used to examine archival lymph nodes (LNs) removed from 102 men who had undergone radical prostatectomy for clinically localized prostate carcinoma and whose tumors had seminal vesicle invasion and negative pelvic LNs at surgery. Careful histologic, immunohistochemical, and molecular LN reevaluation identified prostate carcinoma metastases in only 9 (8.8%) men originally classified as free of lymphatic metastases.

Induction paclitaxel (250 mg/m², 24-hour infusion, every 21 days) for 3 courses produces a 50% objective response rate (10% complete response; 40% partial response) in patients with previously untreated resectable advanced squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck.

Study results suggested that c-erbB-3 expression was an index of malignancy during the progression from verrucous premalignant lesions to malignant lesions of the oral mucosa and that it might have been involved in patient outcome.

Preoperative transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) effectively improved disease-free survival after hepatectomy for both resectable and small hepatocellular carcinoma. Depending upon tumor size, range, hepatic function, and TACE effect, TACE was performed 2–4 times for 6 months before surgery.

In a group of 240 uranium miners whose lung carcinoma was diagnosed between 1991 and 1995, small cell lung carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma appeared more, and adenocarcinoma was less likely to be radiation-induced, particularly among ex- and never-smokers.

Paclitaxel, cisplatin, and gemcitabine combination chemotherapy is feasible and highly active in the treatment of metastatic nonsmall cell lung carcinoma.

Sixty-four consecutive patients with advanced melanoma were treated with a combination of fotemustine 100 mg/m² intravenously (i.v.) on Day 1, dacarbazine 300 mg/m² i.v. on Days 2–4, and cisplatin 25 mg/m² i.v. on Days 3 and 4 recycled every 3–4 weeks. Interferon α2b was administered at a dose of 3 MIU intramuscularly three times per week until disease progression. This treatment schedule demonstrated significant activity by increasing both the proportion of patients who achieved a complete response and the probability of long term survival in patients with advanced, untreated melanoma.

The inducible form of the cyclooxygenase (COX) enzyme, COX-2, has been shown to be important in carcinogenesis. In this study, immunohistochemistry was used to document significant overexpression of COX-2 in common human cancers and their precursors. Collectively, these data suggest that COX-2 inhibitors may be utilized to prevent and treat neoplasms of the lung, colon, and breast.

Dendritic cells derived in vitro can exist viably after intratumoral injection and can mediate biologic activity in situ in patients with metastatic breast carcinoma and melanoma.

Treatment with paclitaxel, carboplatin, and etoposide produced a 48% response rate and 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year survival rates of 48%, 20%, and 14%, respectively, in patients who had unknown primary site carcinomas.

A 14-year-old boy diagnosed with recurrent osteosarcoma that was resistant to chemotherapy was treated with all-trans retinoic acid and interferon-α. The response obtained and the low toxicity observed suggest that such a therapy could be useful in selected patients with recurrent osteosarcoma and might be effective in the treatment of minimal residual disease.

Analysis of a population-based registry with non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients, using cohorts of different age groups, shows that the definition by which age patients should be considered “elderly” depends on histologic type according to the revised European-American lymphoma classification and on the age-adjusted International Prognostic Index (IPI) score. Patients with indolent NHL become “elderly” when they are 70 years old, and patients with aggressive NHL when they are 65 years old, whereas for patients with an IPI score nil, age older than 75 years becomes the dominant prognostic factor. The decrease in relative survival rate diminished for patients older than 70 years.

When a patient suspected of having a sarcoma initially undergoes a needle biopsy, an open biopsy can be avoided 90% of the time, and the outcomes are equally as good as with the open biopsy method.