Breast cancer prognostication and prediction: are we making progress?

Breast cancer prognostication and prediction: are we making progress?

Currently, much effort is being invested in the identification of new, accurate prognostic and predictive factors in breast cancer. Prognostic factors assess the patient's risk of relapse based on indicators such as intrinsic tumor biology and disease stage at diagnosis, and are traditionally used to identify patients who can be spared unnecessary adjuvant therapy based only on the risk of rela...

Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer: Are We Making Progress in Treatment?

Development of systemic treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer (APC) has been challenging. After fluorouracil, gemcitabine (GEM) became the treatment of choice based on its benefit of symptom relief. Many cytotoxic agents have been combined with GEM in search of regimens with improved survival benefit. However, there were only marginal benefits in people with good performance status. Recently...

Hepatorenal Syndrome, Are we making any Progress?

Are we making progress in maternal mortality?

n engl j med 364;21 nejm.org may 26, 2011 1990 resent a diverse genetic pool that allows for adaptation and evolutionary change. Further insight into how these adaptations occur may enhance our ability to predict the emergence of new, more capable bacterial pathogens, the development of more predictive animal models, and the potential identification of critical pathways that might serve as ther...

Genetics and breast cancer risk prediction--are we there yet?

Whether information on genetic variants can be used for better prediction of disease risk is of current clinical interest. Previous studies have shown that mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are associated with high risk of breast cancer (1). Theoretical considerations suggest that further work will lead to the discovery of more genes that are involved in breast carcinogenesis (2). However,...