Prostate volume reduction with androgen deprivation therapy before interstitial brachytherapy.

Purpose: We assessed the degree of prostate downsizing using androgen deprivation, and determined its relation to clinical and pathological variables.

Materials And Methods: From June 1994 to January 2000, 107 patients with prostate cancer received androgen deprivation before interstitial brachytherapy at our hospital. All charts were reviewed for clinical, pathological and treatment related variables.

Prevalence and clinical significance of combined K-ras mutation and p53 aberration in pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

Conclusion: This study could not attribute survival differences to the coincident acquisition of two common genetic alterations, K-ras mutation and p53 overexpression in pancreatic adenocarcinoma patients. Additionally, our data indicate the converse to be true: Those patients lacking both K-ras mutation and aberrant p53 expression showed the shortest survival when compared with cases showing either alteration or both. This study also showed the negative effect of K-ras mutation and p53 expression on pancreas cancer patients' survival after treatment with either radiation therapy or chemotherapy.

HER-2/neu expression in pancreatic adenocarcinoma: relation to tumor differentiation and survival.

HER-2/neu expression in pancreatic adenocarcinoma has been inconsistently reported and has not been fully evaluated with respect to histologic grade and tumor grade heterogeneity. We studied HER-2/neu expression in a series of 79 primary pancreatic carcinomas using immunohistochemical methods, with expression scored for each histologic grade represented in each tumor. We found significantly lower expression of HER-2/neu in poorly differentiated (PD) portions of tumors-those areas lacking glandular differentiation-compared to well-differentiated (WD) and moderately differentiated (MD) portions of tumors.