Profile of ovarian cancer patients seeking information from a web-based decision support program.

Background: There is limited information available regarding the characteristics of patients who elect to gather and share information about their malignancy on the Internet.

Methods: Using a proprietary decision support program embedded into a number of established websites, individuals entered personal clinical data into disease site profilers designed to provide information about evidence-based treatment options, based on specific characteristics (e.g.

Effectiveness of serotonin-receptor antagonist antiemetic therapy over successive courses of carboplatin-based chemotherapy.

Purpose: There are extremely limited data available in the general oncology or gynecologic cancer literature to document the effectiveness of antiemetic therapy over multiple courses of cytotoxic chemotherapy.

Methods: To examine this highly clinically relevant issue, we analyzed the complete treatment course of patients with gynecologic cancers receiving carboplatin-based chemotherapy regimens who had participated in one of four institutional serotonin-receptor antagonist antiemetic trials, which had specifically evaluated the benefits of such therapy during only the first treatment course. Medical records were reviewed to examine the development of emesis during subsequent chemotherapy treatment cycles.