Nearly 1 in 12 patients with a common cancer develop a second, unrelated malignancy

UCLA researchers have identified the incidence and long-term outcomes of patients who develop second, unrelated cancers, resulting in a data set that they say sheds new light on the way cancer survivors may need to be monitored post-disease. The researchers identified more than 2.1 million patients from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database, or SEER, with the most common cancers — prostate, breast, lung, colon, rectum, bladder, uterus, kidney and melanoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The team found that 8 percent of patients developed secondary cancers elsewhere, the most common of which was lung cancer, which is often fatal. Among patients who developed a second cancer, 13 percent died of their primary cancer, while 55 percent died of their second cancer, said Dr. Karim Chamie, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “As clinicians, we can become so focused on surveilling our patients to see if a primary cancer recurs that we sometimes may not be aware that patients can be at risk of developing a second, unrelated cancer,” Chamie said, adding that physicians should rethink how they handle follow-up care and monitoring. ► Video: Dr. Chamie on the importance of broadening cancer surveillance The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Cancer, found that people diagnosed with bladder cancer had the highest risk of developing a second malignancy — most often lung cancer. Chami...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news