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Showing posts from December, 2025

Is Breastscreen up for change?

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Risk-Based vs Annual Breast Cancer Screening : The WISDOM Randomized Clinical Trial https://tinyurl.com/mpe28amd Screening women for breast cancer has been a great success . The death rate for women aged 40-70 from breast cancer has been red uced by 45% following the introduction of mammographic screening every two years. However, this has not been without criticism. The high cost and use of otherwise necessar y resources , together with the great number of biopsies and psychological trauma due to cancer anxiety are stated as flaws in the scheme. The WISDOM clinical trial compared personalized care to standard annual screening. In the randomized trial of over 28,000 women , half were assigned to a risk-based arm . In this arm, women were screened based on genetic and individual risk; for example, those at low risk were not assigned to start regular mammography until age 50. This group’s outcomes were compared to a similar-sized cohort assigned to annual screening. The ...

Some sites of metastases are worse than others

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Impact of single-site distant metastases on prognosis in advanced ovarian cancer: a Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results population-based study https://tinyurl.com/4neetm9k In general, the presence of a distant metastasis is a bad prognostic indicator for women with ovarian cancer. The 5-year survival rate for these women is about 30%. Distant metastases may occu r in the liver, lungs , bones or brain. This study looks at the different survival outcomes for each site . Using the SEER database , which collects cancer information from the US population , the overall survival for 639 patients was determined . From the information collected the most likely site of distant metastasis is in the liver which was seen in about half of the g roup. Next the lungs ( 40%), bones (5% ) and brain (1%). Survival for all these patients is affected . The least impact is seen for those women with liver disease , which has significantly better survival than other distant metastasis site...

Cancelled RCTs

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Characteristics and potential predictors of prematurely terminated interventional clinical trials for ovarian cancer in the ClinicalTrials.gov database https://tinyurl.com/55efrnfz Many randomised clinical trials (RCT) do not reach their endpoint with about 25% being terminated for various reasons . This study used data from the Clinical Trials.gov website to disco ver whether this is true for ovarian cancer also. The website records all clinical trials recruiting in the US and World-wide, a listing on this site does not require FDA or NIH approval. During the period 2003-2022 1420 RCTs for ovarian cancer were included. Of these, 21% were terminated early . Mostly this was a result of logistic issues such as recruitment or f unding. About 1/5 th of the terminations w as due to the intervention being non-effective . The RCTs most likely to be terminated tended to be larger trials requiring big numbers of participants and were more likely when the trial was phase 2. A trial ...

Misinformation may cause distress

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Quarter of all ovarian cancer cases linked to endometriosis: expert https://tinyurl.com/vch9rrc9 NewsNation a cable network news service is the leader in US prime-time television being the most-watched service. As such it has a responsibility to ensure that any comment is fact ual and correct. A recent posting stating that 25% of ovarian cancer is associated with endometriosis does not meet this benchmark. Information taken from a large cohort study published in JAMA in July 2024 appears to have been misinterpreted or misunderstood. Endometriosis is associated with ovarian cancer, most notably rare types such as endometrioid and clear cell cancer,  which most often present at an early stage. The cohort study shows the greatly increased risk with infiltrative an d ovarian endometrioma type disease. However, these represent only a very small proportion of the total spectrum of endometriosis. The absolute risk of developing ovarian cancer for women with endometriosis is about...