Month: May 2014

Eli Lilly and Co’s cancer drug ramucirumab modestly extended survival in a large, late-stage study of patients with advanced, nonsmall cell lung cancer who had relapsed following initial treatment, according to data presented on Saturday. In the 1,253-patient trial, those who received ramucirumab and the common chemotherapy drug docetaxel on average lived for 10.5 months compared with 9.1 months for those who got only the chemotherapy. While the difference amounts to only about six weeks, it was deemed by researchers to be statistically significant and clinically meaningful due to the extremely poor survival prognosis for advanced lung cancer that comes back following initial treatment. “This is the first treatment in approximately a decade to improve the outcome of patients” whose cancer has returned, Dr. Maurice Perol, the study’s lead investigator and head of thoracic oncology at Cancer Research Center of Lyon in France, said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As governors, businesses and environmentalists brace for new limits on power plant pollution, President Barack Obama is casting his unprecedented effort to curb greenhouse gases as essential to protect the health and wellbeing of children.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs became an explosive political story this week, culminating with the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

By Deena Beasley and Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Cancer doctors should consider the financial as well as the medical impact of treatment for patients as healthcare costs continue to grow faster than the overall economy, according to experts in Chicago at the annual meeting of the world’s largest organization of oncologists. The American Society of Clinical Oncology is developing a system to rate drugs for advanced cancer based on a combination of benefit, side effects and price. The cost of such drugs can easily run into tens of thousands of dollars a year, even though many have been shown to extend the lives of later-stage cancer patients by just a few months. “The problem is that the current system is unsustainable because it threatens access to high-quality cancer care,” said Dr. Neal Meropol, chief of hematology and oncology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland.

By Julia Edwards and Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When U.S. President Barack Obama accepted the resignation on Friday of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, he said his priority now was fixing the troubled agency whose officials are accused of covering up delays in providing healthcare for U.S. veterans. As Obama himself said, the sprawling Veterans Affairs department "has had problems for a very long time," including management problems. Obama noted on Friday that the VA enrolled 2 million new veterans in healthcare under Shinseki's watch.  Obama and many Democratic lawmakers say that the increase calls for more doctors and nurses to prevent veterans from having to endure long wait times for care. In February, Senate Republicans blocked a bill by Bernard Sanders, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats and chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, to expand veterans' benefits.