Final data of an Italian multicentric survey about counseling for smoking cessation in patients with diagnosis of a respiratory disease.

Introduction: Smoking is the major risk factor for cancer and several respiratory diseases. Quitting smoking at any point of life may increase the effectiveness of treatments and improve prognosis of patients with any pulmonary disease, including lung cancer. However, few institutions in Europe offer to patients adequate counseling for smoking cessation.

Predictive role of erythrocyte macrocytosis during treatment with pemetrexed in advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients.

Objectives: Pemetrexed has been approved for the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) non-squamous histology, both as first- and second-line therapy. Pemetrexed is an antimetabolite drug, that inhibits enzymes involved in nucleotides bio-synthesis arresting cancer cells cycle. The aim of this study was the evaluation of the impact of pemetrexed on erythrocyte mean corpuscular volume (MCV) change and its possible correlation with disease control rate (DCR), progression free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in NSCLC patients.

Italian multicenter survey to evaluate the opinion of patients and their reference clinicians on the "tolerance" to targeted therapies already available for non-small cell lung cancer treatment in daily clinical practice.

Introduction: The introduction of targeted therapies in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treatment has led to emerging toxicities, whose management and impact on quality-of-life (QoL) is not clearly defined. Aim of this Italian multicenter survey was to highlight any discrepancy between patients' and clinicians' perception of such toxicities in order to improve their management.

Methods: From October 2013 to April 2014, 133 NSCLC advanced patients, treated with targeted therapies, were consecutively enrolled to assess toxicities and QoL with dedicated questionnaires.