Laparoscopic surgery for bladder cancer leads to good long-term cancer control
2014-12-18
(Press-News.org) Long-term survival rates following laparoscopic surgery for bladder cancer are comparable to those of open surgery, according to a study published in BJU International. The findings, which come from the largest study to date with long-term follow-up after this type of minimally invasive surgery, indicate that prospective randomized trials comparing these two bladder cancer surgeries are warranted.
Open radical cystectomy, or removal of the bladder though open surgery, is the treatment of choice for muscle invasive and high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer; however, the surgery can lead to serious complications. Some hospitals are using minimally invasive procedures such as laparoscopic radical cystectomy, but there is little information on the effectiveness of these procedures for preventing cancer recurrence over the long term.
To address this, the European Association of Urology (EAU)-section of Uro-technology has been building a large database of laparoscopic radical cystectomy procedures performed across Europe. When exploring this database, an international team led by Simone Albisinni, MD and Roland van Velthoven, MD, PhD, of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, found that laparoscopic radical cystectomy can lead to reliable cancer control even many years after surgery. After 5 years, 66 percent of patients had no signs of bladder cancer recurrence, and among those followed for 10 years, 62 percent had no signs of recurrence.
"Analyzing over 500 patients and with a median follow-up of 5 years, these results are vital to globally evaluate the efficacy of this procedure. They suggest that a laparoscopic approach to bladder cancer, when performed correctly, can be as safe as open surgery with regards to cancer control, though maintaining the benefits of a minimally invasive approach," said Dr. Albisinni.
The authors noted that there is growing interest for robotic-assisted radical cystectomy, another minimally invasive procedure, in the international community as well; however, many hospitals in Europe do not own a robot. Laparoscopic equipment, on the other hand, is more widely available. "As such, this data represents crucial information for urologists who are performing laparoscopic surgery, or who wish to implement laparoscopic cystectomy in their departments. In spite of the technical difficulty and the need for a learning curve, these findings support the use of a laparoscopic approach for the management of bladder cancer," said Dr. Albisinni.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2014-12-18
Do electronic cigarettes help smokers to quit? Yes, but....
New Cochrane review finds emerging evidence that smokers who use electronic cigarettes can stop or reduce their smoking.
The first Cochrane review on this subject published today in the Cochrane Library gives some early insights in to electronic cigarettes as an aid to stopping smoking and reducing consumption. The review draws on two randomised trials and found that while nicotine containing electronic cigarettes were more effective than electronic cigarettes without nicotine (placebo) in helping smokers ...
2014-12-18
Turning the tables, Katherine Borden at the University of Montreal's Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) has evoked Star Trek's Borg in her fight against the disease. "Cancer cells rapidly evolve a multitude of defense mechanisms to evade the effects of the oncologist's drug arsenal. Unfortunately, clinical strategies to overcome these lag far behind," Borden explained. "This mismatch likely underlies our inability to implement new durable treatment strategies." However, in her paper published in Cancer Research entitled "When will resistance be futile?", ...
2014-12-18
Using combinations of well-known approved drugs has for the first time been shown to be potentially safe in treating a rare disease, according to the results of a clinical trial published in the open access Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases. The study also shows some promising preliminary results for the efficacy of the drug combination.
Drug development can take decades to bring safe and effective treatments to patients. Re-use of existing drugs for new purposes is of considerable interest due to its potential to save time and resources, and help circumvent the low amount ...
2014-12-18
SEATTLE--People are living much longer worldwide than they were two decades ago, as death rates from infectious diseases and cardiovascular disease have fallen, according to a new, first-ever journal publication of country-specific cause-of-death data for 188 countries.
Causes of death vary widely by country, but, at the global level, drug use disorders and chronic kidney disease account for some of the largest percent increases in premature deaths since 1990. Death rates from some cancers, including pancreatic cancer and kidney cancer, also increased. At the same time, ...
2014-12-18
Global life expectancy increased by 5.8 years in men and 6.6 years in women between 1990 and 2013, according to a major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013).
However, some causes of death ran counter to these trends and have seen increased rates of death [1] since 1990, including: liver cancer caused by hepatitis C (up by 125%), atrial fibrillation and flutter (serious disorders of heart rhythm; up by 100%), drug use disorders (up by 63%), chronic kidney disease (up by 37%), sickle cell disorders (up by 29%), diabetes (up by 9%), and pancreatic ...
2014-12-18
Big data may be the next new thing to hit the fashion industry's runways, according to a team of researchers.
By analyzing relevant words and phrases from fashion reviews, researchers were able to identify a network of influence among major designers and track how those style trends moved through the industry, said Heng Xu, associate professor of information sciences and technology, Penn State.
"Data analytics, which is the idea that large amounts of data are becoming more available for finding patterns, establishing correlations and identifying emerging trends, is ...
2014-12-17
MINNEAPOLIS - Migraine headache may double the risk of a nervous system condition that causes facial paralysis, called Bell's palsy, according to a new study published in the December 17, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Bell's palsy affects between 11 and 40 per 100,000 people each year. Most people with Bell's palsy recover completely. Headaches are the most common disorder of the nervous system and affect about 12 percent of the US population.
"This is a very new association between migraine and Bell's ...
2014-12-17
People with the highest fitness levels are less likely to develop hypertension, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
"If you're exercising and you're fit, your chances of developing hypertension are much less than someone else who has the same characteristics but isn't fit," said Mouaz H. Al-Mallah, M.D., senior author of the study and a cardiologist at the Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute in Detroit, Michigan. "Increasing exercise and fitness levels probably protects against many diseases."
More than 57,000 participants ...
2014-12-17
Airline pilots can be exposed to the same amount of UV-A radiation as that from a tanning bed session because airplane windshields do not completely block UV-A radiation, according to a research letter published online by JAMA Dermatology.
Airplane windshields are commonly made of polycarbonate plastic or multilayer composite glass. UV-A radiation can cause DNA damage in cells and its role in melanoma is well known, according to the article.
Author Martina Sanlorenzo, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, and co-authors measured the amount of UV radiation ...
2014-12-17
Prescription use of benzodiazepines--a widely used class of sedative and anti-anxiety medications--increases steadily with age, despite the known risks for older people, according to a comprehensive analysis of benzodiazepine prescribing in the United States. Given existing guidelines cautioning health providers about benzodiazepine use among older adults, findings from the National Institutes of Health-funded study raise questions about why so many prescriptions--many for long-term use--are being written for this age group.
The study found that among all adults 18 to ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Laparoscopic surgery for bladder cancer leads to good long-term cancer control
