Anal carcinoma - Survival and recurrence in a large cohort of patients treated according to Nordic guidelines.

Objective: To evaluate treatment outcome in a large population-based cohort of patients with anal cancer treated according to Nordic guidelines.

Material: Clinical data were collected on 1266 patients with anal squamous cell carcinoma diagnosed from 2000 to 2007 in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. 886 of the patients received radiotherapy 54-64Gy with or without chemotherapy (5-fluorouracil plus cisplatin or mitomycin) according to different protocols, stratified by tumor stage.

Patient-physician communication during oncology consultations.

Objective: The aim of this study was to characterize the content of patient-physician communication in standard oncology care.

Methods: The sample consisted of 19 patients with gastrointestinal cancer. The consultations were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed according to qualitative content analysis.

Efficacy of pegylated liposomal doxorubicin in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

Presently, no effective systemic therapy is available for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (aHCC). We sought to determine whether systemic treatment with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) would yield a response rate of 20% in chemotherapy naïve patients with aHCC. The study was designed according to the phase II Gehan two-step procedure with a precision of 10%.

Capecitabine as third line therapy in patients with advanced colorectal cancer.

This study sought to determine whether third line therapy with capecitabine (cap.) could provide any clinical benefit in patients with advanced colorectal cancer who have progressed on 5-Fu combination therapy with both irinotecan and oxaliplatin. Twenty patients who were pretreated with and had progressed on irinotecan+Nordic FLv (5-Fu/leukovorin) and oxaliplatin+c.