© 2004 by Oxford University Press
© 2004 Oxford University Press
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In Brief
Cancer Survivors May Not Get Necessary Care for Other Medical Conditions
Cancer survivors are less likely than people with no history of cancer to get care for many non–cancer-related conditions, according to a new study.
Researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, compared Medicare claims from more than 14,000 colorectal cancer survivors with claims from more than 16,000 control subjects who had no history of cancer. Their results were published online September 13 in the journal Cancer.
Cancer survivors were less likely than control subjects to receive appropriate follow-up care for heart failure, necessary care for people with diabetes, and recommended preventive services. However, there was no difference in care when cancer survivors were being treated by both primary care physicians and oncologists. The researchers also found that African American, poor, and elderly patients in both groups were less likely to receive necessary care.
The differences in care may occur because the diagnosis of cancer may shift focus away from noncancer medical conditions, the researchers suggested. Furthermore, cancer survivors may neglect seeing their primary care physicians and instead rely on their oncologists to provide primary care.
PSA Now Related Only to the Size of the Prostate Gland, Study Finds
A man's prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level indicates only the size of his prostate, not the size or grade of a tumor, according to a new study.
PSA screening has become commonplace. However, prostate cancers have been found even in men with low PSA levels, and high PSA levels do not always indicate the presence of cancer.
In the October issue of the Journal of Urology, Stanford University researcher Thomas Stamey, M.D., and his colleagues published the results of a new study that analyzed data from more than 1,300 radical prostatectomies performed over the last 20 years and grouped results into four 5-year categories. They found that PSA level was a "reasonably good" indicator of prostate cancer in the first 10 years of the study but that by the final 5-year time period, PSA level was related only to the size of the prostate.
The authors concluded that, now that screening has become more widespread, many cancers are caught at such an early, small stage that they do not generate a high enough PSA level to be a good indicator of the tumor's severity.
CA125 May Be Better Than Tumor Criteria at Predicting Ovarian Cancer Survival
For patients with recurrent ovarian cancer, changes in their CA125 levels may be a better method of predicting survival than the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST), a set of guidelines used for measuring tumor response, according to a new study.
In a study published online September 13 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bo Gronlund, M.D., of the Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues looked at the records of 131 patients with recurrent ovarian cancer who had first-line chemotherapy with paclitaxel and a platinum compound and second-line chemotherapy with topotecan or paclitaxel plus carboplatin.
In patients whose disease progression could be measured by both CA125 and RECIST, the CA125 criteria were 2.6 times better than RECIST at predicting survival. The authors note, however, that these findings may be applicable only to patients treated with either of the regimens of the study population. The authors also called for a prospective randomized trial to assess the two measures in predicting both survival and patient quality of life.
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