Articles

In a review of new drugs to hit the market, speaker Maribel Pereiras, PharmD, BCOP, BCPS, referred to 2010 as “quite the year for prostate and breast cancer.” Pereiras, a clinical assistant professor at Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, Rutgers University, and a clinical oncology pharmacist with Hackensack University Medical Center, New Jersey, reviewed newly approved anticancer agents sipuleucel-T (Provenge), cabazitaxel (Jevtana), eribulin (Halaven), and denosumab (Xgeva) for pharmacists attending the annual meeting of the Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association. Read More ›

In a “Technical Issues” session at the Hematology/Oncology Pharmacist Association annual meeting, Bhavesh Shah, RPh, BCOP, a clinical pharmacy specialist in hematology/oncology with Boston Medical Center, in Massachusetts, discussed dose-rounding, rapid infusion, and other strategies his center has adopted to reduce costs. Read More ›

As nations around the globe struggle to afford the growing cost of care for their citizens, more people are asking, “How much is too much?” when it comes to cancer. Although the John G. Kuhn Keynote Lecture delivered at the annual meeting of the Hematology/ Oncology Pharmacy Association was titled “The Cost of Cancer Therapy,” speaker Tito Fojo, MD, PhD, with the medical oncology branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), says cost is not the real issue. Read More ›

Despite aggressive campaigns to educate Americans on the lifethreatening risks of smoking, nearly 500,000 people die each year in the United States from smoking-related illness, according to a recent study in Epidemiology. Even patients with smoking- related cancers have trouble quitting, with about two-thirds of patients with lung cancer continuing to smoke.

Drug shortages continue to plague the United States, compromising patient safety and placing additional strain on healthcare resources. The shortages encompass common drugs used to treat a range of conditions, from everyday infections to heart attacks.

The US Food and Drug Ad ministration (FDA) held a public meeting in February to assess whether stricter criteria are needed when considering oncology drugs for accelerated approval. Measures enacted in 1992 allow the FDA to grant accelerated approval for drugs targeted at unmet needs in cancer based solely on data from single-arm studies and relying on end points other than the standard metric of overall survival. Read More ›

Patients with inoperable metastatic melanoma now have another treatment option as ipilimumab becomes the second immunotherapy drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of cancer. Fortunately for clinicians, ipilimumab also has a new, easier-to-pronounce name—Yervoy. Specifically, Yervoy is indicated for patients with unresectable metastatic melanoma that is newly diagnosed or progresses despite prior therapy.

Cancer treatment–induced diarrhea (CTID) occurs in 50% to 80% of patients receiving chemo therapy and 50% of patients undergoing radiotherapy. Older patients, women, patients on an irinotecan-containing regimen, and patients treated in the adjuvant setting are at higher risk of CTID, reported Kelly Markey, PharmD, BCOP. Markey is a clinical pharmacist with the gastrointestinal tumor program at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, and discussed CTID at the annual meeting of the Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association.

The median age for someone to receive a cancer diagnosis is 67 years according to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database and even higher for certain malignancies. For example, many gastrointestinal cancers are diagnosed in septuagenarians. Read More ›