Avastin Shows No Benefit Against Early Stage Colon Cancer

Related Encyclopedia • Adenocarcinoma of the Lung and Brain Metastases • Basal Cell Carcinoma • Bladder Cancer • Bone Cancer More... Related Healthscout Videos Skin Cancer: It's About the ABC's Roadmap for the Brain Tracking Breast Cancer with Less Pain No More Biopsies? More... Related Animations • Breast Self-Exam Video • Colon Cancer More... Related Drug Information • Epogen • Iressa • Procrit • Topamax More... Related News Articles • Making Your Way Through the Fog of Chemotherapy • Exercise Boosts Health of Cancer Patients • Many People Still Don't Know How to Protect Against Skin Cancer • Genes' Link to Certain Cancers Questioned More...

Page:  << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3

In the trial, "the vast majority -- 89 percent of these patients -- never developed symptoms from their colon tumor that required urgent surgical intervention," said study senior author Dr. Philip B. Paty, attending surgeon and vice chairman of clinical research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "We believe this non-surgical approach should be regarded as the standard approach for this patient population."

Other research looking at gastrointestinal cancers also turned up largely negative results.

One trial found no difference in survival for pancreatic cancer patients who received the chemotherapy regimen Gemzar (gemcitabine) or 5-FU/FA (fluorouracil/folinic acid) after surgery.

Text Continues Below

---

Gemzar, however, did have fewer side effects, which is "extremely important," said study lead author Dr. John Neoptolemos, head of surgery and oncology at the University of Liverpool in Great Britain. "There had been a tendency to reject 5-FU/FA and now it's very much back on stage," he said at the press conference.

And the standard of care for anal cancer -- radiation therapy plus 5-FU and mitomycin-C chemotherapy -- remains the best bet for patients with this rare malignancy. Chemotherapy with cisplatin showed no superior benefit, according to researchers at the National Cancer Research Institute in Britain. The authors also concluded that maintenance chemotherapy resulted in no added benefit. In either case, however, the prognosis was excellent, with about an 85 percent survival rate at three years.

Finally, Italian researchers from E.O. Ospedali Galleria in Genoa reported that for patients battling rectal cancer, adding another chemotherapy regimen to the standard radiation-plus-chemotherapy protocol did not shrink the tumor any further, although some initial data suggested that it may reduce the spread of the cancer.

More information

There's more on digestive and gastrointestinal cancers at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Page:  << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3