Cancer treatment of severely-III patients not eligible for chemotherapy.

Background: Despite having disseminated cancer, not all patients are eligible for palliative chemotherapy or targeted therapies.

Aim: To study reasons for withholding palliative chemotherapy, to survey which alternatives were offered and to study survival outcomes.

Materials And Methods: Medical records of 346 patients with disseminated cancer were collected.

Unfavorable cancers of unknown primaries: presentation and prognostic factors. A population-based 8-year experience.

Cancer of unknown primary is a mostly disseminated malignancy where detailed investigations cannot reveal a probable origin. A few subsets may respond to specific therapy, but the large majority of cases have a median survival of 3-4 months in the few population-based reports, which, however, did not use current investigations and therapy. It is not known if survival can be prolonged by chemotherapy or if supportive care is preferable, especially in the most unfavorable cases in whom chemotherapy may impair the quality of life without prolonging it.

Treatment decisions and discontinuation of palliative chemotherapy near the end-of-life, in relation to socioeconomic variables.

Unlabelled: During the last decades, the possibilities to prolong survival with chemotherapy even in metastatic disease have increased. Our aim was to study treatment decisions and treatment discontinuation decisions in the proximity of death.

Methods: The medical records of 346 patients with disseminated cancer and a recorded death during 2009 were assessed in relation to demographic and clinical variables and documented treatment decisions were recorded.

Gene expression profiling guiding diagnosis and therapy of rare mammary-like anogenital gland carcinomas.

Cancers derived from anogenital mammary-like glands are rare, and their identification and selection of treatment for dissemination may be difficult. We encountered two such tumors, which both presented as occult primaries with nodal and hematogenous metastases. They were studied by immunohistochemistry, HER2 receptor assay, and gene expression profiling.

Cancer patients without a known primary: incidence and survival trends in Sweden 1960-2007.

Background: Metastatic cancer from an unknown primary tumour (CUP) is a common and heterogeneous clinical entity. In Sweden like in many other countries, the continuum of care for such patients remains to be established.

Material And Methods: Data on CUP cases reported to the Swedish Cancer Registry during 1960 through 2007 was used to assess time trends for incidence, survival, and histological tumour type.