Christin Melton

If you had prostate cancer, would you want to know? Consider this: prostate cancer grows slowly, and in many cases, undetected tumors never become life threatening.

Reforming healthcare often took center stage during the presidential campaign. Having won the election, President Obama continues to tout healthcare reform as one of the top issues he wants addressed his first year in office.

In a decision likely to affect oncology practice nationwide, ASCO recommends clinicians order KRAS gene mutation testing for all patients with a diagnosis of metastatic colorectal cancer prior to establishing a treatment plan.

Previous studies have shown that the Oncotype DX Recurrence Score accurately estimates the risk of breast cancer recurrence in postmenopausal women with a diagnosis of invasive node-negative early stage estrogen-receptor–positive breast cancer who have undergone treatment with tamoxifen.

One of the primary goals in oncology research is finding ways to predict each woman’s individual risk of breast cancer.

Previous research indicates that dense breast tissue is a risk factor for breast cancer development. Some studies have suggested that women who have highly dense breasts (≥60%-75% dense tissue) were as much as six times more likely to develop carcinoma of the breast than women whose breasts consisted primarily of fatty tissue.

Tamoxifen, long considered the gold standard for treating estrogen-receptor (ER) positive, early-stage breast cancer, is known to increase the risk of thrombotic events (blood clots).

Researchers have released findings from a large retrospective study showing that women treated for early stage HER2-positive breast cancer tumors ≤ 1cm have a significantly greater risk of recurrence than women whose tumors are HER2-negative.

TomoTherapy Inc, Madison, Wisconsin, has introduced the TomoDirect discrete-angle delivery mode for its TomoTherapy Hi·Art treatment system. This new technology allows Hi·Art system users to plan and deliver advanced radiation treatments quickly, with a series of linear beam paths rather than the existing helical path.

Small magnets pose a serious risk for children, and more.