Treatments – Conventional – Page 2 – OncWonk – Dr Bier's Oncology Research Reviews

Fifteen-Year Outcomes after Monitoring, Surgery, or Radiotherapy for Prostate Cancer

November 29, 2025

| Cancer - Prostate, Prostatectomy, Radiation Therapy

Comment: This 15-year mortality data from ProtecT is a powerful addition to the 12-year patient-reported outcomes (PROs). underscoring the equivalence between the groups in terms of overall survival, but differences in functional outcomes. We already knew from the PROs analysis that generic quality-of-life scores were similar across all three groups (Active Monitoring, Prostatectomy, Radiotherapy) by […]

Patient-Reported Outcomes 12 Years after Localized Prostate Cancer Treatment

November 29, 2025

| No Comments

| Cancer - Prostate, Prostatectomy, Radiation Therapy

Comment: This analysis provides critical long-term data and most importantly context for localized prostate cancer treatment decision making. The most striking takeaway is the lack of difference in cancer-specific, or overall survival among the three groups (prostatectomy, radiotherapy, and active monitoring) over the 12-year follow-up. Given that there is no difference in overall survival between […]

Association Between Precautionary Behaviors and Breast Cancer-Related Lymphedema in Patients Undergoing Bilateral Surgery

November 25, 2025

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| Cancer - Breast, Mastectomy-Lumpectomy

Comment: This study offers yet more reassuring data to challenge the long-held mythology surrounding lymphedema precautions. For years, the conventional wisdom has dictated a strict avoidance of blood pressure cuffs, blood draws, and injections in the at-risk arm. However, this rigorous prospective analysis confirms what many clinicians have suspected: routine, necessary medical procedures are not […]

Impact of Ipsilateral Blood Draws, Injections, Blood Pressure Measurements, and Air Travel on the Risk of Lymphedema for Patients Treated for Breast Cancer

November 22, 2025

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| Cancer - Breast, Mastectomy-Lumpectomy

Comment: Although this study came out almost 10 years ago, I still regularly have to reassure patients that it’s fine to take a blood pressure or do a blood draw or the side of their surgery. For decades, the caution against ipsilateral blood draws, BP checks, injections, and flying was “logical”—it made sense that trauma […]

Radiation Therapy for Breast Cancer – Synthesis

November 16, 2025

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| Cancer - Breast, Radiation Therapy, Synthesis

☢️Synthesized Clinical Bottom Line Updated 11-16-2025 The provided collection of research, which includes three major Phase 3 randomized controlled trials (RCTs), supplies strong evidence for the de-escalation of radiation therapy in several common breast cancer settings. The central, unifying theme is that the survival benefits historically attributed to radiation have been substantially or entirely negated […]

Real-world impact of postmastectomy radiotherapy in T1–2 breast cancer with one to three positive lymph nodes

November 16, 2025

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| Cancer - Breast, Mastectomy-Lumpectomy, Miscellaneous, Radiation Therapy

Comment: This SEER data review of T1-2N1 breast cancer patients continues the trend we’ve been observing: Postmastectomy Radiotherapy (PMRT) rarely translates into a statistically significant survival advantage in the modern setting. After adjusting for selection bias using Propensity Score Matching (PSM), the 5-year Breast Cancer-Specific Survival (BCSS) was comparable between the PMRT and non-PMRT groups. […]

Ten-Year Survival after Postmastectomy Chest-Wall Irradiation in Breast Cancer

November 16, 2025

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| Cancer - Breast, Radiation Therapy

📝 Comment: This trial provides a critical, high-level confirmation: modern systemic therapy has fundamentally changed the risk/benefit profile of post-mastectomy chest-wall irradiation (CWI) for intermediate-risk breast cancer. The key takeaway is that for the overall population, a minimal absolute reduction in local recurrence (less than 2 percentage points) did not translate into an Overall Survival […]

Omitting Regional Nodal Irradiation after Response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy

November 16, 2025

| No Comments

| Cancer - Breast, Radiation Therapy

📝 Comment: This trial delivers definitive knowledge: Regional Nodal Irradiation (RNI) offers no measurable oncologic benefit for the increasingly common patient population that achieves pathologic complete response (ypN0) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The five-year data unequivocally demonstrate that RNI fails to significantly improve the primary endpoint—invasive breast cancer recurrence-free interval (HR 0.88, p = 0.51)—or any key […]

Breast-Conserving Surgery with or without Irradiation in Early Breast Cancer

November 15, 2025

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| Cancer - Breast, Radiation Therapy, Treatments – Conventional

Comment: This 10-year follow-up of the PRIME II trial reinforces a crucial point for managing older patients with low-risk, hormone-positive breast cancer. Yes, omitting radiotherapy after breast-conserving surgery increased the 10-year local recurrence rate significantly (from 0.9% to 9.5%). However, the definitive, practice-changing finding is that this 10-fold increase in local recurrence had zero impact on […]

Intermittent vs Continuous Androgen Deprivation Therapy for Prostate Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

November 2, 2025

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| ADT - Androgen Deprivation, Cancer - Prostate

Comment: This meta-analysis provides important, ‘Moderate’ certainty evidence that supports a clinical approach that’s simple to implement. The key takeaway is the non-inferiority of intermittent androgen deprivation (IAD) regarding overall survival. While the summary notes minimal difference in overall quality of life, the qualitative data suggesting improvements in physical and sexual functioning is clinically significant. […]