EUROPEAN ONCOLOGY & HAEMATOLOGY VOLUME 14 ISSUE 1 – SUMMER 2018

Welcome to the summer edition of European Oncology and Haematology, a bi-annual journal that features a wide variety of topical articles of interest to oncologists and haematologists as well as the wider medical community. We begin with two editorials debating whether we should address biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer as soon as possible. Hendrik Van […]

Approximately 15–40% of men will develop recurrent disease following an attempt at curative therapy for prostate cancer. Some of them will develop metastases after a median time of 8–10 years. The predictors of metastasis are Gleason score of 8–10, pathological stage T3b-4, nodal invasion and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) doubling time. One can anticipate that about […]

Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy in the adult male population with incidence increasing with age. Approximately 15–40% of patients with prostate cancer will relapse after radical treatment for early disease.1 Salvage treatment is often considered for those with local relapse and increasingly for those with oligometastatic distant disease. The role of androgen deprivation […]

Q. What are the limitations of current methods of detecting biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer? The recommended imaging techniques for the diagnosis of metastases in prostate cancer are 99m-Tc bone scintigraphy for bone metastases and computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for lymph nodes. These two techniques have a very low sensitivity–specificity for detecting […]

Over recent years, there have been significant advances in the treatment of multiple myeloma, including the introduction of novel drugs, which have changed the entire treatment paradigm. The rapid pace of developments in this field have led to the initiation of the annual International Congress on Controversies in Multiple Myeloma (COMy) which began in 2014. […]

Biosimilars, which are copies of patent-expired large-molecule biologic drugs (Table 1),1–8 offer the same rationale as generic drugs. They can give patients, hospitals and healthcare systems the opportunity to expand patient access to care and offer potential budget savings to reinvest (Table 2).1,2,9 They are designed to be similar in effectiveness, safety and quality to […]

In haematologic malignancies with an unfavourable prognosis, high-dose chemotherapy followed by haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is the only realistic curative therapeutic option.1 Allogeneic and autologous haematopoietic stem cells are routinely used for transplantation. Allogeneic HSCT is associated with a significant therapy-related morbidity and mortality.2 In 2012, 6,482 stem cell transplantations were performed in Germany, […]

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a key component of the stroma that dominates the microenvironment of tumours of several different types of cancer especially metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA).1 It contributes to the quite solid characteristics of these tumours, and is an important factor its poor prognosis and in making the disease difficult to treat.1,2 Pancreatic […]

Cervical cancer (CC) is a leading cause of cancer morbidity in women globally. In Europe, epidemiological data on CC incidence shows important differences between countries: from 3.6 per 100,000 women in Switzerland to 28.6 per 100,000 in Romania.1,2 In 2015 in the Republic of Belarus, the morbidity and mortality rate from CC were 11.9 and […]

Diagnosis is often delayed in patients with Gaucher disease type 1 Case 1 A 37-year-old Caucasian woman with spherocytosis reported since childhood presented with swollen ankles, gradually increasing abdominal girth, sudden weight gain (3 kg in 6 days), fatigue and exertional dyspnoea. Patient history showed delayed growth during childhood, hepatosplenomegaly from 3 years of age […]