Study shows that some cancer patients can skip treatments – the latest oncology news review by BIOMEDICA CRO
One new study used a blood test to determine which colon cancer patients could skip chemotherapy after surgery. Another suggests some low-risk breast cancer patients can omit radiation after lumpectomy.
Colon cancer.
The study involved 455 patients who had surgery because cancer had spread into the colon wall. After surgery, one group received a blood test, customized to their tumor’s genetic profile, to detect any remaining bits of cancer DNA.
Skipping chemo makes “a big difference in a person’s quality of life if that can be done without having to put them at jeopardy for recurrence,” said ASCO president Dr. Everett Vokes, who specializes in head and neck and lung cancer at University of Chicago Medicine.
Breast cancer.
The other study followed 500 older women with a common form of early-stage breast cancer and low levels of a protein known as Ki67, a marker for fast-growing cancer.
After surgery, the women took hormone-blocking pills, a standard treatment for this type of cancer, but they did not get radiation treatment.
After five years, 10 of the women saw cancer return in the same breast, and there was one breast cancer death. There was no comparison group, but researchers said the results compare favorably to historical data for similar patients who had radiation.
“We estimate the benefits of radiation would be very small in this population compared to the side effects,” said Dr. Timothy Whelan of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who led the study, which was supported by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and the Canadian Cancer Society.
The findings could allow doctors to “focus on the patients we think would truly benefit from chemotherapy and avoid the side effects for patients for whom it’s likely unnecessary,” said Dr. Stacey Cohen of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.
Please find more information in The New England Journal of Medicine.
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