EUROPEAN ONCOLOGY & HAEMATOLOGY – VOLUME 8 ISSUE 4 – WINTER 2012

As cancer care becomes increasingly sophisticated and complex, the information, image data and steps that comprise a single patient’s healthcare journey has grown dramatically. The Oncology Information System (OIS) has evolved over the last decade as a tool to centralise the patient’s electronic medical record (EMR) in one easily accessible place and to manage the […]

The term lung cancer refers to carcinomas that originate from the respiratory epithelium. Approximately 85 % of all lung cancers are classified as non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), 10 % are small cell lung cancer and other histological variants account for about 5 %.1 Lung cancer represents the second most common type of cancer in both […]

Intraspinal (leptomeningeal or intramedullary) metastases from primary intracranial gliomas have been well documented in several clinical and pathological series.1–5 Post-mortem and cytological incidence of meningeal and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) dissemination of up to 40 % has been demonstrated in these studies. Symptomatic intraspinal metastases in patients with primary intracerebral gliomas occur rarely however – roughly […]

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNETs), also known as islet cell tumours, arise from the pancreatic islet of Langerhans and can be divided into functioning and non-functioning tumours based on whether they are associated with hormonal syndromes caused by excess hormone or peptide secretion. Functioning pNETs can be responsible for a variety of clinical syndromes: Zollinger-Ellison syndrome […]

Rectal cancer, as distinct from colon cancer, occurs in about 40,000 people annually in the US.1 It is an adenocarcinoma, and surgical resection remains the only therapeutic modality offering a chance of cure. However, compared to cancers of the colon, rectal malignancies are more difficult to resect. The lack of a robust mesentery, coupled with […]

Abstract Percutaneous radiofrequency thermal ablation (RFTA) is a modality of therapy suitable in treating different kind of tumours and tumour like conditions. The effects are based on converting radiofrequency into heat, leading to necrosis of the target area. Today it is considered the treatment of choice for osteoid osteomas but it has also yielded satisfactory […]

The fluoropyrimidine drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) was originally patented in the US by Heidelberger and Duschinsky in 1957. Since that time, the use of the drug has been extensively developed and its analogues have played a continuing and pivotal role in cancer treatment. 5-FU was for a long time the only drug administered to gastric cancer […]

Personalised cancer care is becoming an increasingly important aspect of oncological practice. With the advent of high-throughput molecular profiling technology, it is now possible to identify the unique characteristics of a specific tumour and use this information to tailor treatment to the individual patient. Identification of relevant biomarkers, which include genes, proteins and other molecules, […]

Graft versus host disease (GVHD) is a major complication of haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT). Historically, GVHD occurring within the first 100 days post HSCT was classified as acute GVHD (aGVHD). More recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) consensus criteria for clinical trials proposed that clinical manifestations rather than time after transplantation should be used […]

Abstract The adoption of high dose therapy and autologous stem cell rescue (ASCT) for multiple myeloma (MM) in the 1990s heralded a significant advance in outcomes for this incurable plasma cell malignancy. However, over the last decade, the availability of novel agents has once again radically altered the landscape of MM therapy and previously unachievable […]

The role of the dendritic cell (DC) is at the centre of the immune system by initiating, progressing and regulating the responses against pathogens, include tumours. After the first successful clinical achievement in DC-based immunotherapy trials in follicular lymphoma and melanoma in the mid-1990s,1,2 the DC vaccine used to treat patients with cancer such as […]