1. Uncommon Unresectable Advanced Ulcerative Scirrhous Carcinoma of the Nipple Destroying skin, Chest, Muscles and Ribs. Complete Remission (CR) After Epidoxorubicin (EDOX) + Gemcitabine (GEM) Weekly Administration - A Case Report

VEGF and Chromogranin A (CgA): Possible new predictive factors in management of advanced prostatic cancer (APC) in elderly patients

Cancer chemotherapy in the older cancer patient.

This article reviews the principles of systemic cancer treatment in older individuals. These include: assessment of physiologic age with a comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA), adjustment of chemotherapy doses to the patient's renal function, and prevention of myelotoxicity with hemopoietic growth factors. Other complications that become more common with age include mucositis, peripheral neuropathy and cardiomyopathy. Two chronic complications of chemotherapy become more common with age, including myelodysplasia and chronic cardiomyopathy. The goal of systemic cancer treatment in the older person should include prolongation of active life-expectancy and compression of morbidity in addit…

Charge-transfer driven by ultrafast spin-transition in a CoFe Prussian blue analogue

Photoinduced charge-transfer is an important process in nature and technology and is responsible for the emergence of exotic functionalities, such as magnetic order for cyanide-bridged bimetallic coordination networks. Despite its broad interest and intensive developments in chemistry and material sciences, the atomic-scale description of the initial photoinduced process, which couples intermetallic charge-transfer and spin transition, has been debated for decades; it has been beyond reach due to its extreme speed. Here we study this process in a prototype cyanide-bridged CoFe system by femtosecond X-ray and optical absorption spectroscopies, enabling the disentanglement of ultrafast electr…

Cancer in the older person.

Cancer in the older person is an increasingly common problem, due to the progressive prolongation of the life-expectancy of the Western population. This article reviews the mechanisms associating aging and cancer, age-related changes in cancer biology, assessment of the older person to estimate life-expectancy, treatment tolerance, and medical and social conditions that may interfere with cancer treatment, effectiveness of cancer prevention and cancer treatment in older individuals. A comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) is commonly used to predict life-expectancy and functional reserve and to unearth conditions that may jeopardize cancer prevention and treatment. In the interest of cos…

Oral Chemotherapy for the Older Patient with Cancer

Oral chemotherapy presents a number of theoretical advantages in older cancer patients, including convenience of administration and dosage flexibility. Of the oral fluorinated pyrimidines, capecitabine is the most promising, because it minimizes the exposure of normal tissue to the active drug and substantially reduces the risk of mucositis, that is particularly common and severe in the aged. Despite promising initial results, oral etoposide does not offer any special advantage over the intravenous formulation for older patients, while oral temozolomide may have a role in the palliation of malignant melanoma and primary and secondary brain tumors. Of the experimental agents, oral platinum (…

Supportive care of the older cancer patient

Aging is associated with decreased functional reserve of multiple organ systems and with changes in the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodinamics of drugs. Older individuals express enhanced susceptibility to the complications of cytotoxic chemotherapy, especially to myleotoxicity, mucositis, cardiotoxicity and neurotoxicity. The management of older individuals with chemotherapy involves then prevention of these complications. General precautions include proper patient selection, based on the comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA), dose adjustment for agents that are renally excreted to the patient creatinine clearance and maintenance of hemoglobin levelsor =12 g/dl. Filgrastim and pegfilgras…

VEGF levels could affect outcomes in elderly breast cancer women

VEGF values as a predictive factor of treatment efficiency in elderly women with advanced breast cancer