 |
Counting the number of lymph nodes with cancer could be key indicator of survival Image credit SEER via Wikimedia Commons |
The researchers also found that patient mortality risk increased steadily with increasing number of cancerous lymph nodes.
The study co-led by Zachary Zumsteg, MD and Anthony Nguyen, MD, PhD at Cedars-Sinai Cancer Center analyzed the outcomes of 1.3 million patients from the National Cancer Database diagnosed between 2004 and 2015 together with an additional 2 million patients from the NCI’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry. Their study appears in the March 21, 2022 Journal of the National Cancer Insititute.
Often a cancer patient’s prognosis, or chances of survival, is both the patient’s most urgent question for their oncologist, and the key to deciding on a course of treatment after diagnosis. Determining a patient’s prognosis has been a complicated process of examining multiple factors including lymph node involvement and staging, but lymph node staging has been highly variable, depending on the site of the primary tumor.
Because staging helps determine which treatments patients receive, getting it right should be consistent, accurate and universal, which is not always the case. For that reason Nguyen and Zumsteg decided to try to find a simpler, more reliable way to "get it right" when it comes to patient prognosis.
They asked if simply counting the number of cancerous lymph nodes might be the easiest, more accurate process they were looking for. To test their hypothesis, they did an analysis of data already collected on more than 3 million patients, whose diagnosis and outcomes had been recorded in two national databases.
What they found validated their thinking. The more cancerous lymph nodes the poorer the outcome, and it didn’t matter whether it was breast cancer or lung cancer or any other of the 16 most common solid tumor cancers they analyzed.
The finding could change the process of staging a patient’s cancer, and make determining a course of treatment more consistent across a variety of cancer diagnoses.
“These findings are significant because they can potentially improve and simplify how most solid cancers are staged,” said study co-author Nguyen in a press release. "Lymph node counting is possible in virtually all medical settings, including resource-poor countries, without increased cost to the provider or patient. It also is objective and concrete—almost all pathologists can look at lymph nodes and agree about how many are cancerous.”
While the study’s findings are promising, the researchers only focused on survival, and a patient's chances of recurrence and cancer spread are also important factors to consider in treatment decisions. The pair will next look into whether higher positive lymph node counts will also be a predictor of more recurrence and spread to distant sites.
The study co-led by Zachary Zumsteg, MD and Anthony Nguyen, MD, PhD at Cedars-Sinai Cancer Center analyzed the outcomes of 1.3 million patients from the National Cancer Database diagnosed between 2004 and 2015 together with an additional 2 million patients from the NCI’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registry. Their study appears in the March 21, 2022 Journal of the National Cancer Insititute.
Often a cancer patient’s prognosis, or chances of survival, is both the patient’s most urgent question for their oncologist, and the key to deciding on a course of treatment after diagnosis. Determining a patient’s prognosis has been a complicated process of examining multiple factors including lymph node involvement and staging, but lymph node staging has been highly variable, depending on the site of the primary tumor.
Because staging helps determine which treatments patients receive, getting it right should be consistent, accurate and universal, which is not always the case. For that reason Nguyen and Zumsteg decided to try to find a simpler, more reliable way to "get it right" when it comes to patient prognosis.
They asked if simply counting the number of cancerous lymph nodes might be the easiest, more accurate process they were looking for. To test their hypothesis, they did an analysis of data already collected on more than 3 million patients, whose diagnosis and outcomes had been recorded in two national databases.
What they found validated their thinking. The more cancerous lymph nodes the poorer the outcome, and it didn’t matter whether it was breast cancer or lung cancer or any other of the 16 most common solid tumor cancers they analyzed.
The finding could change the process of staging a patient’s cancer, and make determining a course of treatment more consistent across a variety of cancer diagnoses.
“These findings are significant because they can potentially improve and simplify how most solid cancers are staged,” said study co-author Nguyen in a press release. "Lymph node counting is possible in virtually all medical settings, including resource-poor countries, without increased cost to the provider or patient. It also is objective and concrete—almost all pathologists can look at lymph nodes and agree about how many are cancerous.”
While the study’s findings are promising, the researchers only focused on survival, and a patient's chances of recurrence and cancer spread are also important factors to consider in treatment decisions. The pair will next look into whether higher positive lymph node counts will also be a predictor of more recurrence and spread to distant sites.
No comments:
Post a Comment