Sanjoy Roy speaks to Alfie Gleeson, Commissioning Editor: Sanjoy Roy is the Director of Franchise Health Economics and Market Access at Ethicon, Inc. - part of the Johnson and Johnson Medical Device Companies (OH, USA). He has a Bachelor's degree in Pharmacy from Jadavpur University (West Bengal, India), a Master's degree in Health Outcomes and Policy from West Virginia University (WV, USA) and a Professional Certificate in Strategic Marketing from Harvard University (MA, USA). He is a health economist and outcomes researcher with over two decades of work experience in the pharmaceutical and medical devices industry - both in commercial and in research functions. Ethicon has been making significant contributions to surgery, particularly in the suture field, for over 60 years. From the first sutures to the development of minimally invasive procedures they have revolutionized surgery more than once. Sanjoy Roy talks to Lung Cancer Management about how Ethicon has shaped surgery, and how new tools that Ethicon has developed have improved lung cancer surgery outcomes and reduced the economic burden of lung cancer treatment. Finally, we look at the future of lung cancer surgery and how it may change in the light of new technologies and the global burden of disease and healthcare costs.
Aim: To determine whether PET/CT and brain MRI used in staging NSCLC can be accurate, reliable and cost-effective tools. NSCLC represents 80-85% of lung cancer and adequate information on the initial tumor staging is critical for planning an optimal therapeutic strategy.
Patients & methods: Data from 30 newly diagnosed NSCLC patients in Greece were collected and prospectively recorded. Patients with potential resectable disease were evaluated to ensure that there are no detectable metastases that would rule out the possibility of a curative surgery.
Results: Divergence occurred in 50% of cases of staging with CT or PET/CT alone, while metastases undetectable by the CT were revealed using PET/CT. Unnecessary thoracotomies were avoided by 10% of patients and another 10% was operated on after chemotherapy with a better prognosis.
Conclusion: PET/CT and brain MRI combined are reliable for correct staging, reducing avoidable thoracotomies, morbidity rates and costs.
Aim: Herein, we compare outcomes in patients treated with lung stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) with and without tissue confirmation.
Methods: We reviewed 196 patients that underwent lung SBRT for presumed (100 patients) or proven non-small-cell lung cancer (96 patients) over a 10-year period and compared outcomes.
Results: A total of 196 patients with a median age of 76 underwent lung SBRT to a median dose of 48 Gy in four fractions. Median follow up was 17 months. Local control and overall survival at 3 years was 94 and 58% for the entire group. There was no difference in overall survival, local control, regional control or distant control between the cohorts.
Conclusion: SBRT is a safe and effective treatment for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer that are medically inoperable with comparable results in empirically treated patients.
Aim: Guideline concordance is one of the metrics used by the Cancer Quality Council of Ontario and Cancer Care Ontario to assess the quality of cancer care and to drive quality improvement.
Materials & methods: The rates for lung cancer surgical resection and concordance with the Cancer Care Ontario postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) guideline were assessed by health region during two time periods (2010-2011 and 2012-2013) according to five equity measures (age, sex, neighborhood income, location of residence and size of immigrant population).
Results: Of the patients with stage I/II NSCLC, 52.2% to 63.0% underwent surgical resection in the province of Ontario, Canada; for patients with stage IIIA disease, the rate was 26.4%. The probability of a surgical resection decreased substantially with age; only 26.9% of those with potentially resectable (stage I-IIIA) disease over 80 years underwent surgery. The use of postoperative AC increased modestly over the time of the study but the rate of use varied widely by health region (34.6 to 84.6%). Patients in rural areas were as likely to receive AC as urban dwellers; however, older aged patients (≥65 years) and those from the lowest income neighborhoods were significantly less likely to receive AC.
Conclusion: Surgical rates and the use of AC vary by health region in Ontario and by age and level of neighborhood income despite universal access in a publicly funded health care system. The reasons for this variance are unclear but warrant further study.Presented in part at the 15th World Conference on Lung Cancer, Sydney, Australia, 27-30 October 2013.
Surgery is the main curative therapy for patients with localized non-small-cell lung cancer while radiotherapy (RT), alone or with concurrent platinum-based chemotherapy, remains the primary curative modality for locoregionally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. The risk of distant metastasis is high after curative-intent treatment, largely attributable to the presence of undetected micrometastases, but which could also be related to treatment-related increases in circulating tumor cells (CTCs). CTC mobilization by RT or systemic therapies might either reflect efficient tumor destruction with improved prognosis, or might promote metastasis and thus represent a potential therapeutic target. RT may induce prometastatic biological alterations in CTC at the cellular level, which are detectable by 'liquid biopsies', though their rarity represents a major challenge. Improved methods of isolation and ex vivo propagation will be essential for the future of CTC research.
During routine endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) procedures, especially with biopsy of lymph nodes in or around the left upper lobe, frequent reports have noted the loss of ultrasound image and needle angulation leading to an inability to biopsy nodes visualised by EBUS. The aim of this research was to investigate and compare this loss of angulation with commercially available scopes. Bench-top experiments and a clinical case study demonstrated the varying loss of scope angulation, flexibility and manoeuvrability with different scopes and biopsy instruments leading to procedural implications. Improvements in both the EBUS scope and needle characteristics are required to overcome this limitation which has implications in bronchoscope navigation and the diagnostic yield of EBUS-TBNA.