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From the survivor’s viewpoint, Ms.Hoffman’s paper addresses a critical need, expressed in both its title and its conclusions: Medical professionals who treat cancer patients need to be aware of the anxieties faced by those diagnosed with cancer “so

ALEXANDRIA, Va-Of all major American industries, health care appears to be among the least prepared for the complex, interrelated problems known as Y2K. As computers programmed with two-digit year dates move toward the year 2000, many will close down or function improperly because they will erroneously interpret dates beginning with zero as falling in the first year of the 20th, rather than the 21st, century.

ALEXANDRIA, Va-The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the federal agency that pays Medicare claims, expects to be doing business as usual on January 1, 2000, and beyond despite Y2K, said Joseph Broseker, Jr., Y2K Coordinator at the HCFA headquarters, Baltimore.

WASHINGTON-Who says advertising doesn’t work? A new study finds that three heavily advertised brands of cigarettes-Marlboro, Newport, and Camel-are the most popular with American teen-agers. Indeed, 88% of high school seniors who smoke use one of the three. They are also the choice of 86% of 10th graders and 82% of 8th graders.

PHILADELPHIA-The combination of a common cholesterol-lowering agent, lovastatin (Mevacor), with an NSAID may be more effective than NSAIDs alone in the chemoprevention of colon cancer, a new study shows. The data were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting.

Cancer survivors’ access to equal employment opportunities and adequate health insurance has changed significantly during the 1990s. New federal and state laws have expanded survivors’ rights to be treated fairly in

Currently, at least 8 million individuals are alive who have survived cancer for 5 or more years.[1] By the year 2000, 1 in 900 individuals between the ages of 16 and 44 years will be survivors of childhood cancer.[2] Given these statistics, the unique

ASCO-For colorectal cancer patients who have undergone surgery for liver metastases, adjuvant therapy that combines hepatic arterial chemotherapy and systemic chemotherapy effectively controls local disease and significantly increases 2-year survival, Nancy Kemeny, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, reported at ASCO.

BETHESDA, Md-The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has chartered its Cancer Advisory Panel for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, limiting the group’s lifetime to 2 years unless it is formally renewed.

ORLANDO-The most important aspects in treating locally advanced breast cancer are thorough preoperative chemotherapy and a treatment team that combines chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, two experts said at a special session of the Society of Surgical Oncology’s Annual Cancer Symposium. The presenters were Frederick C. Ames, MD, of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and A. Marilyn Leitch, MD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.

ATLANTA–Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Testing for HIV, in conjunction with counseling and other preventive services, can reduce the risk for HIV infection and appropriately link infected persons to treatment. To characterize HIV testing by region, state, and sex, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) analyzed data from the 1996 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). This report summarizes the results of that analysis, which indicate a high degree of variability in HIV testing throughout the United States.

BETHESDA, Md-Nine children’s cancer centers have joined together under the auspices of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to form the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium. The NCI will provide the group $2 million a year for 5 years to fund collaborative efforts to develop and carry out pilot studies and early clinical trials of promising new therapies for children with brain malignancies.

ALEXANDRIA, Va-As cancer care increasingly shifts from inpatient to outpatient services and consumers use the Internet to educate themselves about their disease and their options, cancer programs must concentrate more carefully on marketing themselves as the answer to potential patients’ needs, said Patti Jamieson, MSSW, MBA, service line administrator for oncology, University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla-Time is running out for lobbying against the Health Care Finance Administration’s (HCFA) proposed Medicare hospital outpatient fee schedules, based on ambulatory payment classifications (APCs). The deadline for comments is June 30, 1999.

The Intercultural Cancer Council (ICC) is urging a 100%, or at least a $300 million, increase in federal funding for the

The article by Champlin and colleagues summarizes exciting recent clinical results in allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) for leukemia and lymphoma achieved by “reengineering” the process to take maximum advantage of the powerful

ORLANDO-Ten-year survival results from a major intergroup study support the use of elective (immediate) regional lymph node dissection (ELND) rather than watchful waiting for patients with intermediate-thickness melanomas (1 to 4 mm).

ALEXANDRIA, Va-“Organized opposition to the Health Care Finance Administration’s (HCFA) proposal to reimburse outpatient Medicare cancer services according to ambulatory payment classifications (APCs) now includes many of the major players in the oncology community,” reported Lee E. Mortenson, DPA, executive director of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), Rockville, Maryland.

In the largest human study of its kind, researchers Renate D. Kimbrough, MD, and Martha L. Doemland,PhD, have found

Arsenic may be on the verge of overcoming its bad reputation. Two years ago, Chinese researchers reported that low doses

SAN FRANCISCO-Although there are many good metaanalyses, derived from combining the results of numerous solid clinical trials, there are also many “filled with garbage,” Deborah Grady, MD, said at the Seventh Symposium on Clinical Trials: Design, Methods and Controversies. It is incumbent on the physician to be able to distinguish the good from the bad, said Dr. Grady, associate professor of epidemiology, biostatistics and medicine, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Developing and implementing cancer outreach programs for African-Americans takes planning and sensitivity, said Robin L.

Allen Lichter, MD, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), stated at a meeting sponsored by the

COLUMBUS, Ohio-Hearing the words, “You have cancer,” is immediately upsetting. “That distress can echo through the years, negatively affecting a person’s quality of life [QOL] long after the initial diagnosis of cancer,” said Betty R. Ferrell, PhD, RN, research scientist, City of Hope National Medical Center. She spoke at a conference on cancer survi-vorship sponsored by the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute at Ohio State University. Indeed, she said, in a survey of cancer survivors, distress over initial diagnosis was ranked as the single most negative influence on quality of life, worse than fear of recurrent cancer, fear of cancer spreading, or physical symptoms like fatigue.

ALEXANDRIA, Va-Treating a patient in a clinical trial-nearly always a cancer patient’s best treatment option-is no more costly and far more effective than giving supposedly less expensive “established” care, reported William P.Peters, MD, PhD, president, director, and chief executive officer of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, Detroit. Dr. Peters discussed a series of cost and outcome studies that reached this conclusion at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Community Cancer Centers.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla-The development of chemotherapy agents peaked between 1985 and 1990, Dr. Eric Rowinsky said at the annual meeting of the Network of Oncology Communication and Research (NOCR). “However, we saw the same types of drugs being developed (analogs of the platinums and anthracyclines) because we were using the same old screening system,” he said.

Viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), are parasites: to reproduce, they need to appropriate their host’s

ALEXANDRIA, Va-Although physicians and other health professionals are not taught how to create or pass legislation, it is vital “for each of us to be involved in the legislative process,” Edward L. Braud, MD, said at the 25th Annual Meeting of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC).

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia-Genetic alterations very early in the disease process lie at the root of every cancer. Functional genomics, the study of which genes are actually functioning at a given time or stage, affords a “new approach” to fighting cancer, reported Kristina Cole, MD, PhD, a cancer research training fellow at the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.

ALEXANDRIA, Va-With 56% of cancer patients now receiving off-label therapies and “more than 50%” of physicians reporting problems getting reimbursement for these treatments, assuring coverage for such medications is a major focus of the Association of Community Cancer Centers’ legislative efforts at the state level, said Christian Downs, MHA, director of Provider Economics and Public Policy for the ACCC.