Oncology Vol 30 No 9

Panel testing has important advantages but is being misused due to payer constraints and laboratory marketing pressures. Much testing is haphazard and results in utilization of limited genetic counseling resources in the discussion of variants of uncertain significance and low-penetrance gene mutations.

Current guidelines recommend antimicrobial prophylaxis with fluoroquinolones in patients at high risk for infection-related morbidity and mortality, but this practice provides a short-term benefit to individual patients.

Despite the much higher risk of local recurrence with lumpectomy and radiation compared with mastectomy, multiple retrospective studies and prospective randomized trials have established that survival is the same; however, this may not be so for the individual patient, depending on the type of recurrence.

In this interview we review recent breast cancer screening guidelines from the ACS and USPSTF, and discuss the changing way that early-stage breast and prostate cancers are being treated.

Prior to the advent of targeted therapies, there were few options other than chemotherapy for the treatment of patients with indolent B-cell lymphomas or chronic lymphocytic leukemia.