dose – Oral Cancer News

Ultralow dose of nivolumab offers huge cost savings

Source: www.medscape.com Author: M. Alexander Otto, PA, MMS A randomized clinical trial from India raises the possibility of huge cost savings by using much lower doses of immunotherapy. The researchers used just 6% of the recommended dose of nivolumab instead of the full dose in their treatment of patients with advanced head and neck cancer, and the addition of this low dose to the standard regimen improved 1-year survival by 25%. The study was published on January 10 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and has been downloaded almost 2000 times. The findings suggest that low doses of immunotherapy might be equivalent to the much higher doses that are approved and are currently used, two medical oncologists comment in a related editorial. If these findings can be extrapolated to other immune checkpoint inhibitors and to other tumor types, switching to the lower doses could save healthcare systems billions of dollars, write Aaron Mitchell, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, and Daniel Goldstein, MD, of Tel Aviv University, Israel. Improving Access With limited resources, the Indian healthcare system cannot afford full-dose checkpoint inhibitors, and as a result, fewer than 5% of patients have access to them, explained trial investigators led by Vijay Maruti Patil, MD, a medical oncologist at Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, India. The goal of the trial was to see whether lower, less expensive doses were effective for patients with advanced head and neck cancer. The idea is to increase access by making treatment more [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-01-19T06:40:45-07:00January, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

New MSK radiation approach means fewer side effects for more patients with HPV-related head and neck cancer

Source: www.mskcc.org Author: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Robert Rosenfeld thought the lump he felt in his neck in late 2018 was just a symptom of a cold that wouldn’t go away. He visited an ear, nose, and throat specialist who saw nothing upon first examination, but Robert knew something was wrong and asked for a CT scan. The specialist called him with the bad news: It was almost certainly cancer. A biopsy confirmed he had stage 2 cancer at the base of his tongue and 2 nearby lymph nodes. The tumor was positive for the human papillomavirus (HPV). Robert, then a 69-year-old car salesman on Long Island, met with cancer doctors near his hometown of Hauppauge, New York, to learn about treatment options. He realized he faced a tough road: Standard treatment would be 7 weeks of radiation, during which he also would receive 3 rounds of chemotherapy. The standard radiation dose would likely cause mouth sores, difficulty swallowing, dry mouth (from damage to salivary glands), loss of taste, and nausea. Robert wanted a second opinion, and his medical oncologist strongly recommended Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. When Robert called, he was able to get in to see radiation oncologist C. Jillian Tsai the very next day. “When I met Dr. Tsai, she was amazing,” Robert says. “She told me what I was up against but also that the cancer I had was curable.” There was another major plus: Dr. Tsai was able to offer a significantly reduced radiation [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-01-20T12:49:57-07:00January, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Single dose of HPV vaccine may be as effective as three

Source: www.laboratoryequipment.com Author: Michelle Taylor, Editor-in-Chief More than a decade after the introduction of a vaccine that has been proven to stave off 90 percent of human papillomavirus-caused cancers, only half of U.S. adolescents have completed the 3-shot series. While part of that can be attributed to adolescents and adults who question the validity of the vaccine, the majority is due to unawareness of or forgetting the need for additional doses, lack of insurance and non-frequent contact with the medical system. But, a new study from researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, has revealed a single-dose regimen may be equally as effective as the current 2- to 3-dose system. “Ensuring boys and girls receive their first dose is a big challenge in several countries and a majority of adolescents are not able to complete the recommended series due to a lack of intensive infrastructure needed to administer two or three doses," said the paper’s senior author Ashish Deshmukh, assistant professor at UTHealth School of Public Health. "If ongoing clinical trials provide evidence regarding sustained benefits of a one-dose regimen, then implications of single-dose strategy could be substantial for reducing the burden of these cancers globally." Deshmukh’s study examined the difference in the prevalence of HPV infection in a total of 1620 women aged 18 to 26 of whom 1,004 were unvaccinated, 616 received at least 1 dose of HPV vaccine 106 received just 1 dose, 126 received 2 doses and 384 received 3 doses. Compared [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-01-02T08:41:29-07:00January, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Which HPV vaccination schedule is best: 1, 2 or 3 doses?

Source: www.precisionvaccinations.com Author: Don Ward Hackett A new cervical cancer prevention study of women first offered Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine found that 1-dose of quadrivalent HPV vaccine was as effective as 3-doses at preventing histologically confirmed, high–grade cervical lesions. This Australian study’s finding published online on July 15, 2019, supports the hypothesis that the 1-dose HPV vaccination schedule may be a viable strategy when working towards the global elimination of cervical cancer. These researchers said ‘If one dose could prevent precancerous cervical lesions, then global cervical cancer prevention would be greatly facilitated.’ This is an important goal since about 90 percent of cervical cancer cases are caused by HPV. This study included 250,648 women in Australia with 19.5 percent unvaccinated, 69.8 percent had received 3-doses, 7.3 percent 2-doses, and 3.4 percent just 1-dose of the HPV vaccine. This study’s limitations include some degree of under–linkage and inaccurate data linkage because Australia does not have a unique national identifier, which impacts the classifications of vaccinated women as unvaccinated. Additionally, these researchers said ‘we believe that these data support decision-makers to consider how a 1-dose HPV vaccination schedule, or a planned schedule with a 3–5 year interval between doses, could reduce vaccine demand globally, which currently exceeds vaccine supply.’ But the Gardasil 9 vaccine manufacturer appears to be resolving this supply/demand imbalance. During July 2019, Merck said it is spending $1.68 billion, opening 2 new Gardasil production plants, and adding 525 related jobs. To clarify the Gardasil 9 vaccine dosing schedule, the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2019-08-05T06:21:26-07:00August, 2019|Oral Cancer News|

Lower radiation reduces xerostomia in head/neck cancer patients

Source: www.drbicuspid.com Author: DrBicuspid Staff Lowering the radiation dose to the submandibular gland of patients with head and neck cancer decreases xerostomia, according to a study presented on April 20 at the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) meeting in Geneva. Radiation oncologists at University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) showed for the first time that it is possible to reduce xerostomia in patients treated with radiotherapy for head and neck cancer if the radiation dose to a salivary gland (the submandibular gland) on the opposite side to the tumor is minimized, stated a university press release. It is the largest study yet to show a correlation between radiation doses to the submandibular glands and their output of saliva. Guidelines for the recommended maximum dose could potentially be issued for use in clinical practice to benefit patients, according to the researchers. Approximately 40% of head and neck cancer patients suffer from xerostomia in the long term, which causes problems with eating, sleeping, speech, tooth loss, and oral hygiene, leading to diminished quality of life, social isolation, and difficulty in the ability to work. Attempts to treat xerostomia and its consequences can be costly and are not very effective, the study noted. Therefore, the UMCU researchers looked at using intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) to treat the tumors and spare the submandibular gland on the opposite side of the tumor and both parotid glands. They also wanted to determine the maximum radiation dose and how the treatment would affect patients' xerostomia. They analyzed [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-04-24T12:19:16-07:00April, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Experts: CT scans pose risks, need more regulation

Source: news.yahoo.com Author: Marilynn Marchione, AP Medical Writer From long-term cancer risks to radiation overdose mistakes, CT scans pose a growing danger to the American public and need more regulation to improve their safety, imaging experts write in a leading medical journal. The articles in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine come a week after a story by The Associated Press detailed the overuse of imaging tests and how much the average American's radiation dose has grown in recent years. CT scans are super-sharp X-rays that have transformed medicine by helping doctors quickly diagnose or rule out injuries and diseases. But they use far more radiation than ordinary X-rays, and too much radiation raises the risk of cancer over time. The federal Food and Drug Administration and Congress are considering new measures to help prevent medical mistakes — relatively rare cases where some people are accidentally given radiation overdoses. However, far more people face potential long-term harm from ordinary scans that are done correctly but that are overused, repeated or simply unnecessary. Each year, 10 percent of the U.S. population gets a CT scan, and use of this imaging is growing more than 10 percent per year. "That's really the area we should focus on," said the author of one of the articles, Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman. She is a radiologist at the University of California at San Francisco on temporary leave to do radiation research at the National Cancer Institute. The FDA regulates scanning equipment, but lacks authority to say [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-06-27T10:30:46-07:00June, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Weekly radiation of more than 10 gy improves local control in head and neck cancer patients

Source: www.docguide.com Author: John Otrompke Patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma who receive an average weekly fractionated radiation dose of more than 10 gy experience significantly better local control at 2 years, unless they are receiving chemotherapy at the same time, according to a study presented here at the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) 51st Annual Meeting. "We're not seeing the benefit in those who also receive chemotherapy with the radiation," said Alek F. Dragovic, MD, Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama. If they have low-stage cancer, they may not necessarily need chemotherapy along with radiation. Also, patients are often not healthy enough to receive chemotherapy if they can't tolerate the side effects, Dr. Dragovic explained in his presentation on November 3. In the study, 601 patients who received definitive radiotherapy were divided retrospectively into those who received more or less than an average weekly dose of 10 gy. Patients who received the traditional schedule of once per day made up 45.1% of the patient population, those who received concomitant boost radiation, in which patients get treated twice per day during the last 2 weeks of radiotherapy, were 17.6% of the population; while 17.5% were treated with simultaneous integrated boost, 15.1% received radiation twice daily, and other received other schedules. Overall, patients who received on average more than 10 gy per week experienced 77.4% local regional control at 2 years, compared with 71.4% who received less than 10 gy per week. For [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-11-11T07:50:14-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Identification of highly radiosensitive patients may lead to side effect-free radiotherapy

Source: www.ecancermedicalscience.com Author: staff An international group of scientists has taken the first step on the road to targeting radiotherapy dosage to individual patients by means of their genetic characteristics, a radiation oncologist told Europe’s largest cancer congress, ECCO 15 – ESMO 34, in Berlin today. Professor Dirk de Ruysscher, from Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands, said that his team’s work might provide the basis for personalised radiotherapy in which, with a simple blood test, doctors may be able to select the optimal radiation dose for a particular patient. The team of scientists from The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Canada studied a group of patients with hypersensitivity to radiation therapy, drawn from the largest world-wide database available – the European Union-funded Genetic pathways for the prediction of the effect of irradiation (GENEPI) study, which integrates biological material with patient data and treatment specifications. The database included information from more than 8000 European patients. “Part of this project is the establishment of a sub-database in which very rare patient characteristics are brought together with the hypothesis that their genetic traits will enable the characterisation of molecular pathways related to radio-sensitivity,” explained Professor de Ruysscher. “A major problem for radiation oncologists at present is that we are bound by the need to avoid damage to normal tissues. This means that the dose of radiation generally used is governed by the response of the most radiosensitive patients, and this may lead to many patients receiving lower than optimal doses, hence affecting [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-09-25T07:51:01-07:00September, 2009|Oral Cancer News|