Head & Neck Cancer (HNC): Curative Treatment with Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy

A pleasant lady, 53 years old with long standing hypertension, presented with dysphagia symptom for 3 months duration. She was diagnosed with base of tongue SCC, T2N3M0. Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) Discussion Surgery or definitive concurrent chemo-radiotherapy (CRT)? Surgeon want to operate, I want definitive concurrent CRT (happened all the time during discussion) Rationale? With surgery, …

Living Longer: Stage 4 Stomach Cancer (2nd line treatments)

Upon failure of first line treatment for advanced/ stage 4 stomach cancer, patients with good performance status will benefit from second line treatments. Which agent(s), chemotherapy/ biologic or immunotherapy offer longest median OS in this setting? Second-line Treatments Docetaxel: median OS of 5.2 months (COUGAR-02) - 8.4 months (Lee, 2005) Paclitaxel: median OS of 7.8 …

Living Longer: Stage 4 Stomach Cancer (1st line treatments)

In Malaysia, stomach cancer is the 8th most common cancer. Most stomach cancers were detected at late stage; III (25%) and IV (50%). The average/ median overall survival for stage 4 stomach cancer is not high but there had been incremental increases in average/ median overall survival throughout the years with chemotherapy and lately, with …