Back Issues

Feature Article: Of the estimated 1.5 million people diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States, more than 126,000 are between the ages of 20 and 45. Many young cancer patients want to have children after their treatment is completed, and many will be able to have children naturally at that time. However, some patients will lose their ability to conceive a child without the help of procedures designed to assist with reproduction. Unfortunately, many young patients are not adequately informed of and prepared for the risks to fertility that may accompany cancer and some cancer treatments.

Feature Article: Melanoma is an aggressive form of skin cancer that begins in the pigment-forming cells of the skin called melanocytes. While melanoma accounts for less than 5 percent of all skin cancers, it is far more serious than other skin cancers if not detected and treated early, before it has a chance to spread to nearby lymph nodes. Once the cancer has spread, the chances of achieving treatment success drop significantly. Recently, preliminary findings from a study led by Memorial Sloan-Kettering investigators have revealed rapid and dramatic shrinking of metastatic tumors in patients treated with a new compound that interrupts a tumor-growth pathway present in the majority of patients with melanoma.

Feature Article: Many people undergoing cancer treatment receive some form of radiation therapy to shrink and kill a tumor. A relatively new type of radiation therapy used at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center -- called image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) -- utilizes high-tech imaging with extremely precise radiation beams, ensuring that radiation targets the tumor, sparing nearby healthy tissue. IGRT can be used to treat many types of cancer, including those that develop in the spine, lung, prostate, brain, bladder, esophagus, liver, and bone.

Feature Article: For too long, Western medicine has focused almost exclusively on curing disease, directing scant time, attention, and resources to addressing issues such as pain and symptom relief. Because these issues are especially important for individuals with advanced cancer, more than twenty-five years ago, Memorial Sloan-Kettering was the first cancer hospital to create a pain and palliative care service. Today, the service continues to work to relieve the pain and distress that may be experienced by individuals with advanced, late-stage cancers.

Feature Article: For years, men have been told that the best way to deal with the threat of prostate cancer is to get regular PSA tests, starting for most men at the age of 50. Two recent studies question the usefulness of using PSA testing as a diagnostic tool for prostate cancer. One study found that PSA screening may not significantly reduce the number of deaths from the disease, and the other showed that the benefits of screening may not overcome the high risk of overdiagnosis associated with it.

Feature Article: The majority of women with early-stage endometrial cancer will be cured simply by the surgical removal of the uterus. However, some women who are presumed to have early-stage disease will actually have higher-stage disease on final post-surgery pathological examination of the tumor. To date, there has been no consensus on the optimal way to identify this subset, with some doctors preferring to remove no pelvic lymph nodes during surgery, and others choosing to remove all nearby lymph nodes. The results from a recent study by Memorial Sloan-Kettering investigators demonstrate that a procedure known as sentinel lymph node biopsy provides an accurate method to determine tumor spread.

Feature Article: Each year, about 21,000 Americans will be diagnosed with cancer of the stomach, also known as gastric cancer. In the standard "open" surgical approach to treating stomach cancer, surgeons make an incision through the abdominal muscle to remove either all or parts of the stomach, and, in some cases, nearby lymph nodes and other affected organs. For selected patients, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center offers a minimally invasive laparoscopic surgical approach, which produces comparable success rates to the open procedure, with fewer complications, less blood loss and post-operative pain, and a shorter hospital stay.

Feature Article: While many individuals with rectal cancer may have standard abdominal surgery to remove their tumors, some patients with early-stage rectal cancer can have their tumors surgically removed through the anus with a less-invasive endoscopic procedure. For selected patients with localized rectal cancer, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center offers a surgical procedure known as transanal endoscopic microsurgery (TEM), which minimizes treatment-related complications, avoids the need for a colostomy, reduces recovery time, and spares nearby nerves associated with urinary control and sexual function.

Feature Article: When six-year-old Yehuda Furman developed sudden, unexplainable leg pain, cancer was the last thing his parents and local doctors suspected. The eventual diagnosis of Ewing's sarcoma, and the possibility that he might never walk again, was initially almost too great a shock for the Furmans to comprehend when they sought treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Feature Article: For the first time since cancer incidence has been tracked in the US, the number of people diagnosed with cancer has declined -- and the number of people dying from the disease continues to decline, following a 15-year trend. While the authors of a report in the November 2008 issue of The Journal of the National Cancer Institute attribute the decline in cancer diagnoses to improvements in prevention efforts, they caution that more needs to be done to sustain and extend this progress into all categories of cancer, as well as into all segments of the population.

Feature Article: There were approximately three million cancer survivors in the US in 1971. Today, that figure has grown to nearly 12 million. While most cancer survivors will lead healthy, active lives, some may develop problems related to their cancer and its treatment. To help address these issues in the pediatric population, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has had a pediatric long-term follow-up clinic for nearly two decades. In 2005, a new care model for survivors of adult-onset cancers was developed in which specially trained nurse practitioners provide follow-up care with a focus on both the medical and psychosocial issues related to an individual's cancer and its treatment.

Feature Article: Many people are surprised to learn that about 10 percent of all individuals with lung cancer have never smoked cigarettes. Of these "never smokers" -- defined as individuals who have smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime -- the majority are women who have a particular type of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) called adenocarcinoma. Experts have theorized that these individuals may be genetically more susceptible to lung cancer. To help understand and identify cancer-associated genes in this group, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has created a blood sample registry for patients with lung cancer who have never smoked.

Feature Article: In days past, doctors would often counsel cancer patients to avoid strenuous activity, both during and immediately after treatment. Recent research, however, has demonstrated that moderate exercise can help many individuals with breast cancer to combat treatment-related fatigue and, in some cases, to speed recovery. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Bendheim Integrative Medicine Center has been at the forefront of this change in perspective, offering fitness classes for cancer patients and survivors.

Feature Article: Recent research revealed that the drug finasteride, commonly used to treat enlarged prostates, decreases the risk of prostate cancer by nearly 25 percent. When the original results of the study, known as the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial, were initially released in 2003, the good news was tempered by the fact that the study also revealed a small but statistically significant increase in the number of aggressive, high-grade prostate tumors in the men from the study who were taking finasteride. But two new analyses of the study's data show that finasteride decreases the risk of all types of prostate cancer, even for those men with high-grade tumors.

Feature Article: Recent years have brought significant treatment advances for patients with advanced kidney cancer. However, even with a new class of targeted drugs known as signal transduction inhibitors, most patients' cancer will eventually continue to grow following either a preliminary period of disease stabilization or an initial positive response to treatment. A recent study led by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center investigators has found that a new experimental targeted therapy known as everolimus can significantly delay cancer progression, giving this group of patients new hope.

Feature Article: When the Human Genome Project successfully mapped the complete set of genetic information contained in human DNA in 2003, it promised a revolution in healthcare by offering new genetically informed diagnostic tests and treatments for diseases such as cancer. Since then, a number of companies have developed and released "at home" genetic tests. Clinical genetics investigators, including those at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, caution that while some of these results are promising as research findings, many have not been validated by rigorous clinical study.

Feature Article: A diagnosis of cancer can be overwhelming. Ordinary concerns are often put on hold while important decisions are made and treatments begun -- treatments that can have a debilitating effect on an individual's mental and emotional health. What too frequently is overlooked during this chaotic time, both by patients and their doctors, is that quality cancer care must treat the cancer and address the patient's general well-being. A recent report by the Institute of Medicine proposes a new standard of care that integrates psychological and social support into routine care for people with cancer.

Feature Article: There are seven million computed tomography (CT) scans performed in children each year in the US. While CT is a very useful imaging tool that produces quality diagnostic images of underlying conditions, CT scans expose patients to significantly more radiation than standard x-rays. This is an issue of particular importance for children, whose tissues are more sensitive to the larger relative radiation doses they receive. To provide guidance, the Society for Pediatric Radiology, including physicians from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has launched a project known as Image Gently, which seeks to decrease unnecessary imaging and radiation levels in children.

Feature Article: A diagnosis of cancer brings with it many emotions, fear and anxiety being chief among them. One of the factors that often fuels the anxiety is the confusing array of treatment choices offered. Seeking to provide some statistically-based guidance, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center investigators have created computerized prediction tools, known as nomograms, which are designed to help patients and their physicians decide among the major treatment choices for a number of cancers, including recently revised and expanded nomograms for colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers.

Feature Article: A form of radiation therapy in which radioactive seeds are implanted into or near a tumor, known as brachytherapy, has been shown to be as effective as surgery in treating early-stage prostate cancer. Two Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center studies examining the use of brachytherapy for prostate cancer have found that determining optimal seed placement in the operating room using sophisticated on-site computer programs combined with real-time ultrasound imaging allows accurate doses of radiation to be delivered to prostate tumors while minimizing radiation exposure to surrounding tissues. Optimizing the technique in this way produced nominal side effects and favorable survival rates.

Feature Article: Reaping the benefits of an extraordinary medical breakthrough as a toddler, Daniel Erd had to suffer through months of misdiagnosis and life-threatening complications before triumphing over a rare cancer of the sympathetic nervous system known as neuroblastoma.

Feature Article: Screening for breast cancer with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is significantly more effective at identifying suspicious breast lesions than other existing screening methods such as mammography and ultrasound. The limitation is that MRI screening is not always accurate in distinguishing between cancerous and noncancerous breast lesions -- a fact that leads to a number of unnecessary and invasive biopsies. However, a recent study conducted at Memorial Sloan-Kettering found that combining MRI screening with a scanning tool known as magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy can help radiologists in diagnosing breast cancer by producing fewer false-positive results and reducing the number of avoidable biopsies.