UCLA Health has appointed Scott Eggener, MD, as the chair of the department of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and executive medical director for urology for the UCLA Health system.

In a recent cross-sectional study, researchers from Pennington Biomedical Research Center found that severe obesity is associated with a lower rate of cancer screenings. In their paper published in JAMA Network Open, “Obesity Severity and Cancer Screening in US Adults,” the researchers analyzed de-identified data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to reach these findings.

The study, published in the Annals of Surgical Oncology, found that women in their 80s who get regular mammograms are more likely to have breast cancer detected early, need less aggressive treatment and live longer.

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a groundbreaking diagnostic tool that could transform the way acute leukemia is identified and treated. The tool, called MARLIN (Methylation- and AI-guided Rapid Leukemia Subtype Inference), uses DNA methylation patterns and machine learning to classify acute leukemia with speed and accuracy. This tool has the potential to significantly improve patient care by allowing faster and more precise treatment decisions.

Hot flashes which are sudden, temporary intense sensations of body warmth, often accompanied by flushing and sweating during the day and night (night sweats) are referred to as vasomotor symptoms (VMS). These VMS are associated with sleep disturbances, cognitive dysfunction, severe fatigue, increased pain severity and decreased quality of life. Hot flashes affect up to 80% of women going through the menopause transition, 80% of men with prostate cancer undergoing or after completion of androgen deprivation therapy and 50-80% of breast cancer patients receiving hormone deprivation therapy.

 

The consequences of VMS experienced by perimenopausal and postmenopausal women, aging men and breast and prostate cancer patients cannot be overstated. These overwhelming devastating symptoms not only have a significant impact on the quality-of-life, affect decision-making for life preserving hormone deprivation therapy for breast cancer and prostate cancer patients but also have significant economic and societal consequences.

 

A new study from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine has shown that a wristband cooling device significantly reduced severe hot flash episodes among breast cancer, prostate cancer and postmenopausal women.

A recent analysis published by Wiley online in CANCER reveals a modest decline from 2016 to 2020 in new and additional opioid prescriptions for patients with cancer. Among those patients with metastatic cancer, prescribing remained stable for those reporting any pain and declined steeply for those reporting no pain.