The outcomes of 14 patients treated for angiosarcoma developing after breast-conserving therapy with hyperfractionated and accelerated radiotherapy with or without surgery at the University of Florida were retrospectively reviewed. The authors found a high rate of local control, disease-free survival, and overall survival, and believe the success with this approach is related to both the hyperfractionation and acceleration of the radiotherapy.

The authors observed that it was feasible to incorporate patient-reported outcome measurement into routine clinical care for patients with rectal cancer who were receiving concurrent chemoradiation therapy. This report describes the frequency and trajectory of gastrointestinal symptom development during treatment. Patient-reported symptoms and physician-assessed toxicity differed.

Prostate-specific antigen recurrence after prostatectomy is associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality, not just prostate cancer-specific survival. Radiotherapy or hormonal therapy appears to lessen that risk.

Gemcitabine used as second-line treatment after bacille Calmette-Guérin failure in high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer might represent a safe and effective option. Further clinical research is warranted to corroborate these findings and to define the best treatment protocol in this subset of patients.

An institutional policy mandating a minimum number of lymph nodes removed and examined during a radical cystectomy with pelvic lymphadenectomy can improve bladder cancer patient survival. The policy can lead to greater confidence in pathologic staging and reliability of lymph node density as a predictor of prognosis.

Prostate cancer survivors hypothetically are willing to trade survival to avoid long-term androgen deprivation. This needs to be an individualized decision between physician and patient.

Preoperative plasma total cell-free DNA levels were found to be significantly elevated in patients with ovarian cancer compared with women with benign ovarian masses and unaffected controls. Cell-free DNA levels correlated with aggressive features, such as high stage and level of surgical cytoreduction, and most importantly, were found to be an independent predictor of shorter disease-specific survival in ovarian cancer patients.

In patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), high levels of circulating endothelial cells (CECs), as assessed by flow cytometry, identified a subset of patients with a shorter time to first treatment in both univariate and multivariate analyses. By using florescence in situ hybridization and gene expression profile analyses, cells with the CEC phenotype revealed a molecular pattern that suggested a possible derivation from CLL leukemic cells.

Diabetes is a significant risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma development. However, diabetic patients who were treated with metformin or thiazolidinediones experience a 70% risk reduction of hepatocellular carcinoma compared with the use of insulin or sulfonylureas. Choosing an appropriate and safe treatment for diabetes mellitus is critical in patients with underlying liver diseases.

The site of intracerebrospinal fluid chemotherapy administration affects outcome of patients with neoplastic meningitis.

Immunoglobulin G was identified in a variety of soft tissue tumors. The expression of immunoglobulin correlated well with tumor grade and with the proliferation markers Ki-67, proliferating cell nuclear antigen, and cyclin D1.

The California Cancer Registry was used to examine the epidemiology of Ewing sarcoma from 1989-2007 and to identify relevant prognostic factors for survival.

A study was undertaken to retrospectively evaluate the sensitivity and accuracy of and complications associated with computed tomography (CT)-guided percutaneous needle biopsy (PNB) of pulmonary hilar lesions to establish whether it is a viable alternative to endobronchial ultrasonography. CT-guided PNB of pulmonary hilar lesions was found to have high sensitivity and accuracy and to represent a viable alternative for endobronchial ultrasonography-guided fine-needle aspiration when larger biopsy samples are required for diagnosis or biomarker analysis.

The results from this review of data from the 2005 Health Information National Trends Survey indicated that African Americans are more likely to hold beliefs about lung cancer that could interfere with prevention and treatment.

For lymph node-negative patients, the number of additional nonsentinel lymph nodes and thus the total number of lymph nodes removed was increased for patients with larger tumors and who were younger in age. This observed variation by tumor size and age in the total number of lymph nodes removed among patients with negative sentinel lymph nodes is a potential unrecognized source of morbidity of sentinel lymph node biopsy, and may be important in evaluating reported risk of axillary recurrence for sentinel lymph node biopsy studies.

An examination of early stage breast cancer patients' experiences with genomic testing revealed that ⅓ of women reported suboptimal levels of perceived understanding of discussions about their recurrence risk based on the test. Approximately 25% reported experiencing distress when receiving test results, suggesting a need to further improve risk communication and treatment decision making.

Vitamin D obtained from occupational sunlight exposure may reduce the risk of renal cell carcinoma, particularly among men residing in Central Europe. In the current study, the authors observed a significant reduction in renal cancer risk among men who were exposed to increasing occupational sunlight; no association between cancer risk and sunlight exposure was observed among women.

Nuclear morphometry is a method for quantitative measurement of histopathologic changes in the appearance of stained cell nuclei, and can be applied for estimating the malignancy of lung adenocarcinoma. Nuclear area and nuclear major dimension are 2 useful markers for evaluating the prognosis of lung adenocarcinoma.

The authors examined baseline and follow-up pulmonary function tests in long-term survivors of pediatric hematologic malignancies and allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). We identified risk factors that are useful for risk-adapted monitoring and counseling, including the abnormal pre–allo-HSCT pulmonary function tests, interval from allo-HSCT, patient age, respiratory event after allo-HSCT, sex, leukemia-risk group, and hematopoietic stem cell product.

A significant difference between the incidence of higher grade diarrhea in the morning and in the evening provided indirect evidence of the influence of circadian rhythm in the intestinal mucosa of the human intestine. This knowledge may facilitate treating patients with decreased toxicity to the intestinal mucosa.

The acute palliative care unit facilitates simultaneous care for patients receiving cancer treatment. In the current study, the authors examined the frequency and predictors associated with antineoplastic therapy use in cancer patients admitted to the acute palliative care unit at the study institution.

This study was the first to the authors' knowledge on providing long-term ghrelin to weight-losing cancer patients in which the effects of ghrelin were evaluated on anorexia and cachexia. The results suggested that daily, long-term provision of ghrelin to weight-losing cancer patients with solid tumors supports host metabolism, improves appetite, and attenuates catabolism.

Measuring and managing disease-related and treatment-related symptoms are critical components of care and clinical research for cancer patients. The authors report the development and psychometric validation of the M. D. Anderson Symptom Inventory gastrointestinal module (MDASI-GI), a valid, reliable, concise tool for measuring symptom severity and interference in patients with gastrointestinal cancer.