Study Shows Circulating Tumor Cell Count May Determine High or Low Mortality Risk in Prostate Cancer Patients

According to a recent article in MedPage Today, "an elevated circulating tumor cell count at baseline identified patients with an increased mortality risk, Howard Scher, M.D., of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues reported in the Feb. 11 issue of The Lancet Oncology.

Changes in cell count also predicted response to therapy and mortality risk, beginning as early as four weeks after treatment.

If corroborated in other studies, the findings could have implications for drug development.

"Multiple prospective randomized trials powered to show clinical benefit for patients are needed to show whether biomarkers such as circulating tumor cells are useful as measures of risk and as intermediate endpoints," the authors said."

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Smoking Increases Risks But Should Not Delay Lung Cancer Surgeries

Though still preliminary and not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, MedPage Today reports that studies have revealed those who were former smokers or are currently smokers, should not have necessary lung cancer resection surgery delayed due to their smoking histories.

Overall hospital mortality was 1.4% (109 deaths), but among never smokers the rate was 0.4% compared with 1.5% in smokers.

Patients who had stopped smoking more than a year before surgery still had a higher risk for perioperative mortality compared with never smokers, but the difference was no longer statistically significant (OR 2.5, 95% CI 0.82 to 7.6, P=0.17).

Among smokers, the rate of pulmonary complications including re-intubation, pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and ventilation was 2.6% versus 2% among never smokers, Dr. Subramanian said.

But the increased risk of pulmonary complications diminished relatively quickly so that there was no statistically significant increase among those who stopped smoking a month or more before surgery.

Read the rest of this article at Med Page Today.