Like any other cancer – breast cancer is a highly individual disease, shaped by many factors such as age, health status or genetics. Due to the complex web of molecular pathological processes and resistance mechanisms it is very difficult to select the most effective therapy for each patient.
A 2012 study analysing the care of cancer patients in the USA in 138 Veterans’ Administration hospitals (pub: Journal of the National Cancer Institute) questions the effectiveness of tumour board review. The study measured effectiveness by comparing the presence of tumour review boards with stage-specific quality of care and patient outcomes.
Medicine is not immune to prejudices. In the past, the ‘fatty liver’ diagnosis was often accompanied by the hasty conclusion that the problem was surely caused by alcohol abuse.
Bladder cancer is highly challenging in terms of patient management and medical costs. As the fourth most frequent cancer in men and ninth in women in developed countries, although BC is a common disease it is still under-represented in public awareness and in cancer research .
Apart from tumour immunologists themselves, for a long time oncologists have underestimated the role of the immune system in cancer treatment. Nonetheless, in recent years increasing attention has been given to this aspect of cancer.
Research using an analytical health economics model has suggested the current system of screening within the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is only moderately likely to be cost effective.
Ultrasound may be used during breast conservation surgery, to locate tumour lesions or to place localising wires; it can also guide a lumpectomy and perform a specimen exam to ensure a lesion has been excised and to evaluate surgical margins
Statistically speaking every fourth older German man suffers from prostate cancer with the mortality rate being 60,000 patients annually
Sanofi and the Curie Institute, through its Curie-Cancer partnership under the Institut Carnot label, today announce the establishment of a three-year research collaboration to identify new therapeutic targets for the development of treatments for ovarian cancer.
The German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) is sending a promising duo into the race against cancer: A new PET/MR system that can combine high-resolution images with functional information to improve cancer diagnosis.
The German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Bayer HealthCare (Bayer) will extend their successful strategic research alliance in search of novel cancer therapeutics by focusing their activities also on the field of immunotherapy.
EKF Diagnostics, worldwide manufacturer of point-of-care diagnostic tools, organ injury biomarkers and assays, has announced the launch of a new division to focus on molecular and companion diagnostics.
‘All human body cells contain the same DNA, but every type of cell – for example a muscle cell compared to that of a nerve – has a different gene expression pattern’, said Dr Sonja Stadler, speaking at the 2012 congress of DGKL (German Society for Clinical Chemistry).
The international research project ‘The Definition of new types of tumours containing potential mutations sensitivity to drugs’ has begun in Petrov Research Institute of Oncology in St Petersburg, the oldest Russian oncology institute.
Modern imaging techniques greatly enhance the treatment selection
In a Special Focus Session, experts addressed the necessity to perform palliative interventional techniques in cancer treatment and they insisted that interventional radiologists should become more than just technicians.
Hedvig Hricak, Chair of the Radiology Department at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA, describes emerging applications and potential trends in gynaecological cancer treatment described at the 15th International Symposium Crossing Barriers
CT scanners now nicely cover morphology. The challenge is moving to CT functional imaging without frying patients
The hepatocellular carcinoma is the sixth most frequent cause of cancer worldwide, explained Dr Bruno Sangro at ECR, and it is the third most frequent cause of death due to cancer.
You won't find a single new machine among the novel technology shaping radiology. Instead software, not hardware, is the key that is opening new frontiers.
The last decade saw PET and now PET/CT numbers expand rapidly in Europe. More recently the picture has been less rosy with public and private sectors delaying new projects and pushing back the replacement of equipment.
Experts across Europe believe the combination is beginning to demonstrate its broad potential as a hybrid imaging tool
Simultaneous surgical successes open new perspectives for multiple transplants
Colon cancer remains the second most common cause of cancer-related death in the Western world with 450,000 citizens in Europe newly diagnosed and 230,000 deaths annually (Source: Globalscan 2008).
Forty years ago an article was published that would change medical practice. In the British Journal of Radiology, English electrical engineer Godfrey N Hounsfield described how he had made a patient’s brain visible non-invasively by evaluating a large number of X-ray images of the skull taken from different directions.