JacketFlap connects you to the work of more than 200,000 authors, illustrators, publishers and other creators of books for Children and Young Adults. The site is updated daily with information about every book, author, illustrator, and publisher in the children's / young adult book industry. Members include published authors and illustrators, librarians, agents, editors, publicists, booksellers, publishers and fans. Join now (it's free).
Login or Register for free to create your own customized page of blog posts from your favorite blogs. You can also add blogs by clicking the "Add to MyJacketFlap" links next to the blog name in each post.
Blog Posts by Tag
In the past 7 days
Blog Posts by Date
Click days in this calendar to see posts by day or month
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: chemotherapy, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 3 of 3
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: chemotherapy in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
One of the biggest obstacles in treating cancer is drug resistance. There are still many unanswered questions about the genomic features of this resistance, including different patient responses to therapy, the role drug resistance plays in the relapse of tumours, and how cancer treatments in the future will combat drug resistance.
Receiving a cancer diagnosis is emotional and overwhelming for patients. While initially patients may appropriately focus on understanding their disease and what their treatment options are, supportive care should begin at diagnosis and is a vital part of care across the continuum of the cancer experience. Symptom management, as a part of supportive care, is aimed at preventing the side effects of the cancer and its treatment. Appropriately managing these side effects will help enable patients to maintain their quality of life through their cancer journey.
It is well-known that, unfortunately, many cancer treatments (mainly chemotherapy) will cause nausea and vomiting. Fortunately, decades of research have improved our understanding of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) and have led to the development of very effective and safe drugs to prevent and manage these bothersome and potentially debilitating side effects. Research has also shown us that often combinations of two or three drugs taken together, sometimes over multiple days, offers the best CINV prevention with certain chemotherapies. With the appropriate use of these “antiemetic” drugs, CINV can now be prevented in the majority of patients. However, 20-30% of patients may still suffer from these side effects. Some of these patients are refractory in that the recommended antiemetic prophylactic treatments, for whatever reason, do not prevent the nausea and/or vomiting. Other patients, unfortunately, are incorrectly managed and are not given the appropriate preventative treatments. This is indefensible and not representative of an optimal patient-centered approach to cancer management. Physicians should be approaching symptom management in the same manner as they approach cancer therapeutics, utilizing the best and most appropriate treatments available.
With the goal of making prevention of CINV simpler and more convenient, the first antiemetic combination product has recently been developed, combining two drugs in a single pill that only needs to be taken right before chemotherapy is administered along with a single dose of dexamethasone. This new product (called NEPA or Akynzeo®) was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (and is under review in Europe) after years of development. The combination not only comprises two drugs from two classes, an NK1 receptor antagonist (RA) and a 5-HT3 receptor antagonist, representing the current standard-of-care. The NK1 RA (netupitant) and the 5-HT3 RA (palonosetron), however, are long-acting, and palonosetron is recommended by many guidelines committees as the preferred 5-HT3 RA.
Three of the pivotal studies conducted to establish the efficacy and safety of NEPA were recently published in Annals of Oncology. These selected articles convincingly show efficacy with the NEPA combination, superior prevention of CINV compared with that of oral palonosetron, and maintenance of efficacy when given over multiple cycles of chemotherapy known to result in nausea and vomiting.
NEPA appears to be a promising new agent with the potential to address some of the barriers interfering with physicians’ administration of recommended antiemetics. This is accomplished by conveniently packaging effective and appropriate antiemetic prophylaxis in a single, oral dose that is taken only once per chemotherapy cycle, along with a single dose of dexamethasone.
Hopefully this will help, because preventing the symptoms has to be as important as treating the disease.
Heading image: Cancer cells by Dr. Cecil Fox (Photographer) for the National Cancer Institute. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
5 Stars “Having hunted for her mother’s hair, a young girl learns the truth about cancer while experiencing life (with hats, scarves, baldness, and love), during chemotherapy.” Nowhere Hair is a wonderful way to begin a talk centered on cancer. The author uses comforting tones that will sooth young and old alike. No one wants [...]