© 2005 Oxford University Press
NEWS |
In Brief
Panel Recommends Tracking Data for Mammograms
To improve the accuracy and reliability of mammograms, breast imaging facilities should collect data to measure their staffs' performance in screening and detecting breast cancer, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies.
Studies suggest that current breast cancer screenings may miss as many as one in six tumors, according to a 2004 National Academy of Sciences report. In addition, a substantial percentage of suspicious findings end up being false positives, which can lead to unnecessary treatments as well as pain and emotional stress for patients.
The new report proposes both mandatory and voluntary ways for mammography facilities to track performance data. Also, this information should all be stored in a central data center to be used by doctors. Medicare, Medicaid, and other health insurance providers should boost their reimbursement rates to cover the cost of collecting these data, says the report.
Congress requested the report from IOM in preparation for its review of the Mammography Quality Standards Act in 2007.
Statins May Be Associated With Reduced Risk of Developing Colon Cancer
Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may be associated with a reduced risk of developing colon cancer, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ann Arbor examined data from a population-based case–control study in Northern Israel that included 1,953 patients with colorectal cancer and 2,015 control subjects without the disease. They found that statin use was more prevalent in the control group than among those with cancer. After considering factors such as age, sex, ethnic background, family history, and lifestyle factors, the researchers still found that statin use was associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer compared with non–statin users.
However, in an editorial accompanying the article in the May 26 New England Journal of Medicine, Ernest Hawk, M.D., and Jaye L. Viner, M.D., of the National Cancer Institute, write that other similar studies "have shown inconsistent associations between statin use and the incidence of cancer," including at least one study that reported an increased risk of colon, prostate, and bladder cancer among statin users.
The researchers agree that more research is needed to study how drugs such as statins can be used to prevent multiple diseases, including colon cancer. Until these studies are done, they say, it is too early to advise people to take statins to prevent any type of cancer.
Docetaxel Offers a More Effective but More Toxic Drug Regimen for Breast Cancer
A combination of the taxane docetaxel with doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide (TAC) may be a more effective adjuvant treatment for breast cancer than the generally accepted drug regimen of fluorouracil with doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide (FAC), says a new study in the June 2 New England Journal of Medicine.
The 1,491 women in the study with lymph node–positive breast cancer who had recently undergone surgery were randomly assigned to receive either TAC or FAC.
The authors calculated that the patients on TAC had a 75% 5-year disease-free survival rate, compared with 68% among those on FAC. They also calculated an 87% overall survival rate for TAC, compared with 81% for TAC.
However, 36.3% of the patients in the TAC group had severe blood-related adverse events, compared with 26.6% of patients in the FAC group. In addition, 65.5% of the TAC group experienced neutropenia, and 24.7% suffered febrile neutropenia, compared with 49.3% and 2.5%, respectively, in the FAC group.
An accompanying editorial questions whether the seeming improved efficacy of the TAC regimen outweighs its toxicity for use in patients. However, the study states that the toxic effects were "manageable," and in quality-of-life surveys, patients in both groups had similar results after the treatments.
The editorial also questioned the use of FAC as the comparison regimen, as many doctors are already putting patients on a combination of drugs that include paclitaxel, which is in the same family of taxane drugs as docetaxel.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||