Articles

People who smoke more frequently have a greater chance of developing more aggressive and deadly bladder cancer.

As cancer treatments emerge in pill form, patients meet many challenges when administering their own chemotherapy outside the supervised cancer clinic environment.

Bendamustine has an interesting history that spans more than 50 years. Bendamustine was first synthesized in the early 1960s in the former East Germany. It was first used to treat multiple myeloma and was subsequently extended to patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), and Hodgkin lymphoma.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most common form of leukemia in adults and is a slowly progressing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. According to cancer statistics, an estimated 16,060 new CLL diagnoses will be made in the United States in 2012.

Since the approval of bendamustine, healthcare practitioners have additional treatment options available to patients with specific hematologic malignancies. In the United States, bendamustine was approved for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or indolent B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) who had progressed within 6 months of receiving rituximab-containing regimens.

This is the first article in a 4-part series on bendamustine. This article describes the history and characterization of bendamustine. Subsequent articles will discuss the efficacy and safety of bendamustine in registration studies and describe ongoing clinical investigations of bendamustine.

I am enthusiastic about this 6-part series titled Conquering the Cancer Care Continuum. Each edition of CCCC will address an important topic in oncology management and offer expert stakeholder commentaries.

This, the first issue in the second annual Conquering the Cancer Care Continuum series, focuses on palliation in cancer care. Future articles in the series will explore oncology pain management, hospice care options, treatment planning through the cancer care continuum, survivorship care programs, and the role of biosimilars in supportive care.

The evolution of drug research and development toward oral therapies for cancer over the past decade has created a number of questions for the oncology healthcare provider.

It is well documented that healthcare costs and spending have been growing at staggering rates. Healthcare accounts for ~17% of total gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States.