Background: Thyroid nodules are a common clinical problem, and differentiated thyroid cancer is becoming increasingly prevalent. Since the American Thyroid Association's (ATA's) guidelines for the management of these disorders were revised in 2009, significant scientific advances have occurred in the field. The aim of these guidelines is to inform clinicians, patients, researchers, and health policy makers on published evidence relating to the diagnosis and management of thyroid nodules and differentiated thyroid cancer. Methods: The specific clinical questions addressed in these guidelines were based on prior versions of the guidelines, stakeholder input, and input of task force members. Task force panel members were educated on knowledge synthesis methods, including electronic database searching, review and selection of relevant citations, and critical appraisal of selected studies. Published English language articles on adults were eligible for inclusion. The American College of Physicians Guideline Gr...

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2015 American Thyroid Association Management Guidelines for Adult Patients with Thyroid Nodules and Differentiated Thyroid Cancer: The American Thyroid Association Guidelines Task Force on Thyroid Nodules and Differentiated Thyroid Cancer.

Background Sipuleucel-T, an autologous active cellular immunotherapy, has shown evidence of efficacy in reducing the risk of death among men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Methods In this double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter phase 3 trial, we randomly assigned 512 patients in a 2:1 ratio to receive either sipuleucel-T (341 patients) or placebo (171 patients) administered intravenously every 2 weeks, for a total of three infusions. The primary end point was overall survival, analyzed by means of a stratified Cox regression model adjusted for baseline levels of serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and lactate dehydrogenase. Results In the sipuleucel-T group, there was a relative reduction of 22% in the risk of death as compared with the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.61 to 0.98; P = 0.03). This reduction represented a 4.1-month improvement in median survival (25.8 months in the sipuleucel-T group vs. 21.7 months in the placebo group). The 36-month survival probability was 31.7% in the sipuleucel-T group versus 23.0% in the placebo group. The treatment effect was also observed with the use of an unadjusted Cox model and a log-rank test (hazard ratio, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.61 to 0.97; P = 0.02) and after adjustment for use of docetaxel after the study therapy (hazard ratio, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.62 to 0.98; P = 0.03). The time to objective disease progression was similar in the two study groups. Immune responses to the immunizing antigen were observed in patients who received sipuleucel-T. Adverse events that were more frequently reported in the sipuleucel-T group than in the placebo group included chills, fever, and headache. Conclusions The use of sipuleucel-T prolonged overall survival among men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. No effect on the time to disease progression was observed. (Funded by Dendreon; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00065442.)

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Sipuleucel-T immunotherapy for castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Effects of radiotherapy and of differences in the extent of surgery for early breast cancer on local recurrence and 15-year survival: an overview of the randomised trials.

PURPOSE: In a previous study of treatment for advanced colorectal cancer, the LV5FU2 regimen, comprising leucovorin (LV) plus bolus and infusional fluorouracil (5FU) every 2 weeks, was superior to the standard North Central Cancer Treatment Group/Mayo Clinic 5-day bolus 5FU/LV regimen. This phase III study investigated the effect of combining oxaliplatin with LV5FU2, with progression-free survival as the primary end point. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Four hundred twenty previously untreated patients with measurable disease were randomized to receive a 2-hour infusion of LV (200 mg/m2/d) followed by a 5FU bolus (400 mg/m2/d) and 22-hour infusion (600 mg/m2/d) for 2 consecutive days every 2 weeks, either alone or together with oxaliplatin 85 mg/m2 as a 2-hour infusion on day 1. RESULTS: Patients allocated to oxaliplatin plus LV5FU2 had significantly longer progression-free survival (median, 9.0 v 6.2 months; P = .0003) and better response rate (50.7% v 22.3%; P = .0001) when compared with the control arm. The imp...

Leucovorin and Fluorouracil With or Without Oxaliplatin as First-Line Treatment in Advanced Colorectal Cancer

Invasive candidiasis (IC) is a leading cause of mycosis-associated mortality in the United States. We examined data from the National Center for Health Statistics and reviewed recent literature in order to update the epidemiology of IC. IC-associated mortality has remained stable, at approximately 0.4 deaths per 100,000 population, since 1997, while mortality associated with invasive aspergillosis has continued to decline. Candida albicans remains the predominant cause of IC, accounting for over half of all cases, but Candida glabrata has emerged as the second most common cause of IC in the United States, and several less common Candida species may be emerging, some of which can exhibit resistance to triazoles and/or amphotericin B. Crude and attributable rates of mortality due to IC remain unacceptably high and unchanged for the past 2 decades. Nonpharmacologic preventive strategies should be emphasized, including hand hygiene; appropriate use, placement, and care of central venous catheters; and prudent use of antimicrobial therapy. Given that delays in appropriate antifungal therapy are associated with increased mortality, improved use of early empirical, preemptive, and prophylactic therapies should also help reduce IC-associated mortality. Several studies have now identified important variables that can be used to predict risk of IC and to help guide preventive strategies such as antifungal prophylaxis and early empirical therapy. However, improved non-culture-based diagnostics are needed to expand the potential for preemptive (or early directed) therapy. Further research to improve diagnostic, preventive, and therapeutic strategies is necessary to reduce the considerable morbidity and mortality associated with IC.

Epidemiology of Invasive Candidiasis: a Persistent Public Health Problem

730: Short- Versus Long-Term Androgen Suppression Plus External Beam Radiation Therapy and Survival in Men with High-Risk Adenocarcinoma of the Prostate

354 long term results of immediate versus deferred androgen depri-vation in patients with no local treatment for t0–4 n0–2 m0 prostate cancer (eortc 30891)

Boost or Not. Authors' reply

Does Whole-Brain Radiation Therapy for Oligometastatic Brain Metastases Translate Into a Survival Benefit for Patients With a Limited Competing Risk From Extracranial Disease? A Secondary Analysis of EORTC 22952-26001

Generalized pairwise comparisons (GPCs) are a statistical method used in randomized clinical trials to simultaneously analyze several prioritized outcomes. This procedure estimates the net benefit (Δ). Δ may be interpreted as the probability for a random patient in the treatment group to have a better overall outcome than a random patient in the control group, minus the probability of the opposite situation. However, the presence of right censoring introduces uninformative pairs that will typically bias the estimate of Δ toward 0. We propose a correction to GPCs that estimates the contribution of each uninformative pair based on the average contribution of the informative pairs. The correction can be applied to the analysis of several prioritized outcomes. We perform a simulation study to evaluate the bias associated with this correction. When only one time-to-event outcome was generated, the corrected estimates were unbiased except in the presence of very heavy censoring. The correction had no effect on the power or type-1 error of the tests based on the Δ. Finally, we illustrate the impact of the correction using data from two randomized trials. The illustrative datasets showed that the correction had limited impact when the proportion of censored observations was around 20% and was most useful when this proportion was close to 70%. Overall, we propose an estimator for the net benefit that is minimally affected by censoring under the assumption that uninformative pairs are exchangeable with informative pairs.

Laurence Collette

Papers

730: Short- Versus Long-Term Androgen Suppression Plus External Beam Radiation Therapy and Survival in Men with High-Risk Adenocarcinoma of the Prostate

354 long term results of immediate versus deferred androgen depri-vation in patients with no local treatment for t0–4 n0–2 m0 prostate cancer (eortc 30891)

Boost or Not. Authors' reply

Does Whole-Brain Radiation Therapy for Oligometastatic Brain Metastases Translate Into a Survival Benefit for Patients With a Limited Competing Risk From Extracranial Disease? A Secondary Analysis of EORTC 22952-26001

Correcting the bias of the net benefit estimator due to right-censored observations.