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Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (Sloan-Ketter + cancer_center)

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Medical Sciences100%

Kinds of Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

  • memorial Sloan-Ketter cancer center
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    Selected Abstracts

    The implementation and assessment of a comprehensive communication skills training curriculum for oncologists

    PSYCHO-ONCOLOGY, Issue 6 2010
    Carma L. Bylund
    Abstract Objective: The objective of this paper is to report the implementation and assessment of the Comskil Training Curriculum at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Method: Twenty-eight attending physicians and surgeons participated in communication skills training modules as part of a train-the-trainer program. Doctors were video recorded in clinical consultations with patients two times before training and two times after training, resulting in 112 video recordings for analysis. Recordings were coded using the Comskil Coding System. Results: Communication skills related to two of the six major skill sets, Establishing the Consultation Framework and Checking, increased following training. Limited changes emerged in three skill sets, while one skill set, Shared Decision Making, did not change. Doctors who attended more training modules had higher levels of change. Female participants demonstrated three skills more frequently than males post-training. Conclusions: The intervention produced significant communication skills uptake in a group of experienced attending clinicians, mediated by the amount of training. Future research should focus on the dose of training necessary to achieve skills uptake and the effect of skills training on patient outcomes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

    A three-year study of chaplains' professional activities at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York city

    PSYCHO-ONCOLOGY, Issue 8 2003
    Kevin J. Flannelly
    The pastoral-care interventions of chaplains at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center were documented during two-week periods in each of three years. The study describes the pattern of referrals to and from chaplains and the kinds of interventions performed during the chaplains' contacts with patients and their families and friends. Nearly a fifth of all chaplain interventions were the result of referrals. The vast majority of staff referrals to chaplains came from nurses, with the frequency and proportion of referrals from nurses significantly increasing over time. More than a third of all chaplain contacts were with friends and family without the patient present, and over 40% of referrals to chaplains were for the friends and family of patients. Pastoral visits were significantly shorter when patients were not present. In particular, pastoral-care interventions were found to differ according to the patient's religion and the circumstances of the chaplain's visit to the patient (i.e. patient status). Visit duration also varied by patient status, with pre-operative visits being significantly shorter than post-operative or treatment visits. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

    Art therapy with adult bone marrow transplant patients in isolation: a pilot study

    PSYCHO-ONCOLOGY, Issue 2 2001
    Bonnie Gabriel
    Psycho-social interventions for cancer patients in isolation for bone marrow transplant (BMT) have been advocated in the recent literature. It is not clear what type of interventions would be most appropriate. This study was conducted at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), with three aims. (1) To test the feasibility of introducing art therapy as a supportive intervention for adult BMT patients in isolation. Nine patients were seen in art therapy sessions twice a week while in isolation, and were helped to develop free personal images. The three art therapists used the same art therapy program as a model. (2) Toassess how patients would use the program. Forty-two images were made by the nine patients during the art therapy sessions. A thematic analysis of the images showed that the patients used art therapy effectively in three ways: (a) to strengthen their positive feelings, (b) to alleviate their distress, and (c) to clarify their existential/spiritual issues. (3) The third aim was to identify which patients would most benefit from art therapy. Our results suggest that the non-verbal metaphorical modality of art therapy may be especially beneficial for patients who need to deal with emotional conflicts, and with feelings about life and death, in a safe setting. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

    Clinical and pathologic prognostic features in acinic cell carcinoma of the parotid gland

    CANCER, Issue 10 2009
    Daniel R. Gomez MD
    Abstract BACKGROUND: To the authors' knowledge, the indications for adjuvant treatment in acinic cell carcinoma (AciCC) of the parotid gland have not been elucidated to date. The aim of the current study was to determine patterns of failure and adverse prognostic features. METHODS: Between March of 1989 and August of 2006, 35 patients underwent surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for AciCC of the parotid gland and had their clinical and pathologic features retrospectively analyzed at the primary site. All cases were reviewed by 2 head and neck pathologists. Five-year estimates of survival outcomes were performed, followed by univariate analysis of potential prognostic features. RESULTS: The T classifications were as follows: T1 in 46% of patients, T2 in 23% of patients, T3 in 18% of patients, and T4 in 9% of patients. Three patients had cervical lymph node involvement. All patients underwent surgery as their primary treatment. Approximately 63% of patients (n = 22) received radiation treatment. The median follow-up time for surviving patients was 59.9 months. Five-year estimates of disease-free survival (DFS), overall survival (OS), and local control were 85%, 90%, and 90%, respectively. Of the clinical variables tested, clinical extracapsular extension (ECE), facial nerve sacrifice, and lymph node involvement were found to be significantly associated with a detriment in DFS and OS (P < .05). Positive surgical margins, histologic ECE, >2 mitoses per 10 high-power fields (HPF), atypical mitosis, vascular invasion, perineural invasion, pleomorphism, and necrosis were associated with adverse DFS (P < .05). All of these variables except for vascular invasion (P = .377) and perineural invasion (P = .07) were associated with OS. If high-grade tumors were defined on the basis of high mitotic activity (>2 mitoses/10 HPF) and/or tumor necrosis, high-grade carcinomas had a significantly lower DFS and OS (P = .001). CONCLUSIONS: AciCC had a low treatment failure rate, and a large number of patients could be considered candidates for surgery only. A histologic grading system was devised to help stratify patients for adjuvant treatment. Cancer 2009. © 2009 American Cancer Society. [source]

    High incidence of disease recurrence in the brain and leptomeninges in patients with nonsmall cell lung carcinoma after response to gefitinib

    CANCER, Issue 11 2005
    Antonio M. P. Omuro M.D.
    Abstract BACKGROUND Gefitinib is an epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor that induces an early and dramatic response in 10% of patients with advanced nonsmall cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Long- term outcome and patterns of disease recurrence after response have not been described. METHODS The authors evaluated 139 patients with NSCLC treated with gefitinib at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY) between 1998 and 2002. They focused on patterns of disease recurrence, risk of brain metastases (BM) and leptomeningeal metastasis (LM), and long-term outcome after initial response to gefitinib. RESULTS Of the 139 patients treated with gefitinib, 21 (15%) achieved a partial response. The median age of the responders was 64 years (range, 38,87 years), the median Karnofsky performance score was 80 (range, 60,90), and 4 of the patients were men. All responders had adenocarcinoma. The central nervous system (CNS) was the initial site of disease recurrence in 7 (33%) patients (BM in 5 and LM in 2). In 9 (43%) patients, the initial site of disease recurrence was the lung and in 1 it was the liver and bone. Four (57%) of the patients with disease recurrence in the CNS had lung disease under control. BM also developed in 2 patients who had initial disease recurrence in the lungs. The actuarial 5-year incidence of CNS metastases was 60%. The median overall survival periods were 15 months and 23 months for patients with and without CNS metastases, respectively (P = 0.24). CONCLUSIONS The CNS was a frequent site of disease recurrence in patients with NSCLC after an initial response to gefitinib, regardless of disease control in the lungs. Patients should be carefully monitored for neurologic symptoms. Intrinsic resistance of metastatic clones, incomplete CNS penetrance of the drug, and longer survival are possible explanations for this high incidence. Cancer 2005. © 2005 American Cancer Society. [source]

    Body mass index is weakly associated with, and not a helpful predictor of, disease progression in men with clinically localized prostate carcinoma treated with radical prostatectomy

    CANCER, Issue 10 2005
    Kozhaya N. Mallah M.D.
    Abstract BACKGROUND Several studies have recently suggested an association between body mass index (BMI) and disease progression after radical prostatectomy. In the current study, the authors examined this association and that between the reciprocal of BMI (INVBMI, 1/BMI) and progression-free probability in men treated with radical retropubic prostatectomy (RRP) for clinically localized prostate carcinoma. METHODS The authors retrospectively studied 2210 patients who underwent RRP at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center between September 1986 and May 2003. Clinicopathologic variables analyzed included BMI (kg/m2), preoperative serum prostate-specific antigen level (ng/mL), clinical T classification, year of surgery, race, biopsy-derived primary and secondary Gleason grades, and INVBMI, known to better correlate with percent body fat than BMI. Cox regression analysis was used to examine the possible association between BMI or its reciprocal with disease progression after controlling for the effects of common prognostic factors. The areas under the receiver operating curve (AUC) for models with and without INVBMI were calculated RESULTS Of the 2210 patients analyzed, 251 experienced disease progression in a median follow-up time of 25.9 months (range, 0,143 months). After adjusting for all clinical variables, both BMI (P = 0.071; hazards ratio [HR] = 1.027) and INVBMI (P = 0.041; HR < 0.001) were associated with disease progression. However, the areas under AUC for models with and without INVBMI were similar (range, 0.794,0.798). CONCLUSIONS Although conflicting evidence has been reported regarding the link between obesity and an increased risk of developing prostate carcinoma, as well as an increased risk of developing aggressive disease and prostate carcinoma-related mortality, the authors found weak associations with disease progression for both BMI and INVBMI. These variables were of negligible prognostic value in men who received surgery. Studies with longer follow-up, that examine alternative end points, and that follow treatment(s) besides surgery are needed. Cancer 2005. © 2005 American Cancer Society. [source]

    Validation of the postoperative nomogram for 12-year sarcoma-specific mortality

    CANCER, Issue 10 2004
    Fritz C. Eilber M.D.
    Abstract BACKGROUND On the basis of a prospectively followed cohort of adult patients with primary soft tissue sarcoma (STS) who were treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC; New York, NY), a nomogram for predicting sarcoma-specific mortality was developed. Although this nomogram was found to be accurate by internal validation tests, it had not been validated in an external patient cohort, and thus its universal applicability remained unproven. METHODS Between 1975 and 2002, 1167 adult patients (age , 16 years) underwent treatment for primary STS at the University of California,Los Angeles (UCLA; Los Angeles, CA). All patients treated with an ifosfamide-based chemotherapy protocol (n = 238) were excluded from the current analysis. The remaining 929 patients constituted the population on which the validation study was performed. The nomogram validation process comprised two activities. First, the extent of discrimination was quantified using the concordance index. Second, the level of calibration was assessed by grouping patients with respect to their nomogram-predicted mortality probabilities and then comparing group means with observed Kaplan,Meier estimates of disease-specific survival. RESULTS With median follow-up intervals of 48 months for all patients and 60 months for surviving patients, the 5-year and 10-year disease-specific survival rates were 77% (95% confidence interval [CI], 74,80%) and 71% (95% CI, 67,75%), respectively. Application of the nomogram to the UCLA data set yielded a concordance index of 0.76, and the observed correspondence between predicted and actual outcomes suggested a high level of calibration. CONCLUSIONS In the current study, the MSKCC Sarcoma Nomogram was found to provide accurate survival predictions when it was applied to an external cohort of patients who were treated at UCLA. Cancer 2004. © 2004 American Cancer Society. [source]

    Hepatic intraductal oncocytic papillary carcinoma

    CANCER, Issue 10 2002
    Robert C. G. Martin M.D.
    Abstract BACKGROUND There has been an increasing incidence and mortality from peripheral cholangiocarcinoma (PC) in the United States over the past 24 years. PC has been classified into two principal types, a mass-forming type and a periductal-infiltrating type, with a significant difference in the clinical behavior between the two. A third type, demonstrating a noninvasive intraductal growth of PC, was described as papillary PC. Rarely, papillary hepatic tumors composed of oncocytic cells have been described. Intraductal oncocytic papillary carcinomas (IOPCs) of the liver present as large, mucin-filled, cystic lesions lined by noninvasive or focally microinvasive oncocytic tumors. METHODS From June 1999 to August 2001, three patients with hepatic IOPCs were identified in the files of the Hepatobiliary Service, Department of Surgery, and the Department of Pathology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. They form the basis of this study. We report the clinicopathologic presentation, as well as the outcome, with a review of the literature. RESULTS All three cases presented with well defined intrahepatic cystic masses ranging in size from 7.2 to 21.1 cm. The most prominent cells of the lining epithelium were columnar with oncocytic features showing abundant eosinophilic granular cytoplasm and centrally located nucleoli. All three patients underwent resection with one demonstrating local bile duct recurrence that was managed with stenting. Review of the literature has identified 39 patients with papillary PC and 2 patients with IOPC. The biology of these reported cases has been variable with overall survival better than that of nonpapillary PC patients, with recurrence in 15% of the reported cases. CONCLUSION Papillary PC is a rare type of cholangiocarcinoma that includes an interesting variant: IOPC. These tumors are predominantly found in men, who present with large (> 5 cm) mucinous cystic lesions of the bile duct. A noninvasive histology is seen, and long-term survival may be achieved with complete resection. Invasive variants of IOPC have been reported in the literature and have a worse overall prognosis. Cancer 2002;95:2180,7. © 2002 American Cancer Society. DOI 10.1002/cncr.10934 [source]