Diagnosis and treatment of the inferior vena cava syndrome in advanced malignant disease.

The syndrome of intrahepatic inferior vena cava obstruction has neither been commonly recognized nor adequately described. Symptoms include the abrupt onset of ascites, hepatomegaly, and fluid retention below the diaphragm with edema of the lower extremity. Proteinuria can be associated with these symptoms.

The importance of treatment sequence in advanced and metastatic carcinoma of the breast.

From 1965 to the present, 287 patients with advanced and metastatic carcinoma of the breast have been treated according to a uniform philosophy of sequential therapy. Surgical castration was the initial procedure for premenopausal women and for postmenopausal women with clinical or laboratory evidence of endocrine responsive tumors. Tumor progression following castration was treated with major endocrine ablation, either adrenalectomy or hypophysectomy.

Results of oophorectomy by menstrual and estrogen receptor states in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

The records of 204 women with metastatic breast carcinoma treated by oophorectomy were analyzed. Premenopausal women had a response rate of 50 percent. Forty-one percent of postmenopausal women responded.

Dimethyltriazenoimidazole carboxamide therapy of islet cell carcinoma of the pancreas.

Four patients with metastatic glucagonoma and one patient with metastatic diarrheogenic islet cell carcinoma of the pancreas were treated with dimethyltriazenoimidazole carboxamide (DTIC), 250 mg/M2 daily for five days repeated every four weeks. All patients responded clinically and chemically in one or more ways by a reduction in plasma glucagon levels, improved glucose tolerance, decreased measureable tumor, weight gain, and resolution of necrolytic migratory erythema and diarrhea. This experience and other cases from the literature call for the investigation of DTIC as the initial therapy in metastatic islet cell carcinoma of the pancreas and as being of possible benefit in other tumors of neuroendocrine origin.