Breast Cancer Presenting as Unilateral Arm Edema

CONTEXT: Symptomatic arm lymphedema as the presenting symptom of invasive breast carcinoma is a rare occurrence. DESIGN: We report a case of invasive breast cancer presenting with unilateral arm swelling. The patient was initially thought to have venous thrombosis. A thorough physical examination and a mammogram revealed the presence of breast cancer and associated subclinical axillary lymphadenopathy. CONCLUSION: Failure to recognize this presentation can lead to misdiagnosis or a significant delay in diagnosis and treatment

Treatment of Colorectal Peritoneal Carcinomatosis With Systemic Chemotherapy: A Pooled Analysis of North Central Cancer Treatment Group Phase III Trials N9741 and N9841

Symptoms and complications of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) differ by metastatic sites. There is a paucity of prospective survival data for patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis colorectal cancer (pcCRC). We characterized outcomes of patients with pcCRC enrolled onto two prospective randomized trials of chemotherapy and contrasted that with other manifestations of mCRC (non-pcCRC)

Finite Element Modeling of Quantitative Ultrasound Analysis of the Surgical Margin of Breast Tumor

Ultrasound is commonly used as an imaging tool in the medical sector. Compared to standard ultrasound imaging, quantitative ultrasound analysis can provide more details about a material microstructure. In this study, quantitative ultrasound analysis was conducted through computational modeling to detect various breast duct pathologies in the surgical margin tissue. Both pulse-echo and pitch-catch methods were evaluated for a high-frequency (22–41 MHz) ultrasound analysis. The computational surgical margin modeling was based on various conditions of breast ducts, such as normal duct, ductal hyperplasia, DCIS, and calcification. In each model, ultrasound pressure magnitude variation in the frequency spectrum was analyzed through peak density and mean-peak-to-valley distance (MPVD) values. Furthermore, the spectral patterns of all the margin models were compared to extract more pathology-based information. For the pitch-catch mode, only peak density provided a trend in relation to different duct pathologies. For the pulse-echo mode, only the MPVD was able to do that. From the spectral comparison, it was found that overall pressure magnitude, spectral variation, peak pressure magnitude, and corresponding frequency level provided helpful information to differentiate various pathologies in the surgical margin

Clinical Utility of Gene Expression Profiling Data for Clinical Decision-Making Regarding Adjuvant Therapy in Early Stage, Node-Negative Breast Cancer: A Case Report

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women in the United States with the second highest incidence of cancer-related death following lung cancer. The decision-making process regarding adjuvant therapy is a time intensive dialogue between the patient and her oncologist. There are multiple tools that help individualize the treatment options for a patient. Population-based analysis with Adjuvant! Online and genomic profiling with Oncotype DX are two commonly used tools in patients with early stage, node-negative breast cancer. This case report illustrates a situation in which the population-based prognostic and predictive information differed dramatically from that obtained from genomic profiling and affected the patient’s decision. In light of this case, we discuss the benefits and limitations of these tools