Clinical

Patients with chorea associated with Huntington’s disease have the first new treatment in nearly a decade. The FDA has approved Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd’s Austedo (deutetrabenazine) for the treatment of chorea, which affects nearly 90% of patients with Huntington's.

The patient voice is becoming more important as healthcare moves to a value-based, patient-centered system of care, but just amplifying the patient voice is not enough. There needs to not only be amplification, but also a constructive response from the health system, said Thomas Lee, MD, chief medical officer at Press Ganey, during his presentation at the National Quality Forum Annual Conference.

The 5-year survival estimate from a study evaluating nivolumab in a subset of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is significantly longer following treatment discontinuation.

Behind the scenes there are a number of advances that Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, director of the National Library of Medicine, would like to see take place to make it easier to get literature into people's hands.

The full approval comes in less than 2 years of the drug's accelerated approval by the FDA.

Being blind, intellectually disabled, or having a spinal cord injury can reduce the probability of a person being screened for colorectal cancer.

Richard Mullvain, RPh, BCPS (AQC), CCCC, a cardiovascular clinical pharmacist and expert in cardiovascular care at the Essentia Health Heart & Vascular Center in Duluth, Minnesota, delivered a focused clinical review on the topic of the PCSK9 inhibitor Repatha (evolocumab), and its impact on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C).

A study published in the journal Cancer has found that the rate of advanced imaging at the time of breast cancer diagnosis reduced during the period between 2008 and 2015 in the state of Michigan.

The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy Annual Meeting kicked off on March 28, 2017, in Denver, Colorado, with a look at the specialty pharmaceutical pipeline with Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, senior clinical consultant for emerging therapeutics at Express Scripts.

Results from the randomized NOVA trial convinced the FDA to approve niraparib (Zejula) as maintenance treatment for adult patients with recurrent epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or peritoneal cancer who are sensitive to platinum-based chemotherapy.

According to research conducted at the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz, nearly 75% of smokers have low socioeconomic status.

While the orphan drug market has been growing, a new study argues that the current unmet needs of patients with rare disease proves that current incentives are not efficiently stimulating orphan drug development.

At the 22nd Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, held March 23-25, 2017, in Orlando, FL, Gregory J. Riely, MD, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, spoke about the what, when, and how of biomarker testing in non-small cell lung cancer.

On the second day of the 22nd Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), Kilian E. Salerno, MD, of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, walked the audience through updates to the NCCN Guidelines, explaining clinical situations in which radiation is indicated, appropriate targets of radiation treatment, and optimal approaches for minimizing toxicity.

While multigene panels are extremely important in precision cancer care, high levels of variance and insufficient insurance coverage are significant barriers to rapid adoption, according to Kenneth Offit, MD, MPH, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

At the 22nd Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, held March 23-25, 2017, in Orlando, FL, policy researchers with interest in cancer care disparities discussed the source of existing disparities and how they can be successfully addressed.

The report, which provides an update on all the monumental changes witnessed by the field of oncology over the last year, highlights 3 key achievements: new investments in science and insurance coverage, payment models that emphasize quality, and rapid-learning healthcare systems.

Using patient-reported outcomes and data on healthcare utilization, researchers from the Yale School of Medicine have been able to compare the health burden of asthma—COPD overlap syndrome with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) alone.

Do newer forms of radiation treatments surpass standard radiation in prostate cancer?

The FDA has issued a warning for Viberzi that patients who do not have a gallbladder have an increased risk of developing serious pancreatitis.

A preview of some of the discussions at the 22nd Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN).

The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) has come out strongly against a bill that would provide employers with insight into workers’ personal medical and genetic information.

This week, the top managed care stories included the Congressional Budget Office releasing its rating of the GOP's health plan, the Senate voted to confirm Seema Verma for CMS administrator, and Scott Gottlieb, MD, was nominated to lead the FDA.

The White House budget “blueprint” for 2018, which was released today, has recommended substantial cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).