PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Rumiko Okamoto

Publications and source records attributed to Rumiko Okamoto.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

[The present state and future of home care for gastric cancer patients].

Recently, cancer treatment has been shift from inpatient chemotherapy to outpatient chemotherapy, because of various medical circumstances. In chemotherapy of gastric cancer, outpatient chemotherapy was not spread in the last decade, because the chemotherapy protocol of gastric cancer was not fit for outpatient chemotherapy. But the development of new drugs as TS-1 make outpatient chemotherapy more frequent. So home care of patients has been important for management of gastric cancer. Various symptoms due to obstruction at primary lesion or other lesion prevent patients from living at home in gastric cancer. But recently, technical development and spread of home parenteral nutrition make a possible home care of patients with gastric cancer. It is necessary to make a system that supports patient life at home.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

[Clinicopathological characteristics of gastric cancer in elderly patients].

Careful consideration must be given to the efficacy of treatment for elderly patients with advanced gastric cancer. Thirty-two elderly patients, 75 years of age or older with gastric cancer, were treated in Tokyo Metropolitan Komagome Hospital,Department of Chemotherapy, between January, 1993 to December, 2002. We analyzed the data of these patients retrospectively. The male/female ratio was 13:3, and 90.6% of the patients developed complications. Some 29 patients were treated with 5-FU regimen. The response rate was 17.2%, median survival time was 201 days, and 5 PR pts had 421 days' survival time. Patients with good PS had long survival times. A comparative study was conducted between 15 cases treated with cisplatin (CDDP) regimen and 14 cases without CDDP. Among them, 13 pts were given a low dose and 16 pts a full dose of chemotherapy (5-FU+/-CDDP). No differences were found between the two groups in overall survival time. No patients showed a severe adverse effect and some exhibited improvement by the chemotherapy. Therefore, the choice of chemotherapy for an elderly gastric cancer patient mostly depends on the patient' s general condition. Elderly patients can develop many complications, so the organ function test should be carefully evaluated. Development of an oral anticancer drug for gastric cancer is in progress and promises to show good results in the near future. Chemotherapy appears able to preserve good "Quality of Life" and will play an important role in the treatment of gastric cancer in elderly patients.

Adenocarcinoma↗
PubMed2003

[Hepatotoxicity of chemotherapy].

Patients who will receive chemotherapy require careful assessment of liver function prior to treatment to determine which drugs are not appropriate, and which drug need dose modification. Many medications, alcohol has their more or less hepatotoxic effect, so because of their immunocompromise state, some body are prone to liver infection, including viral hepatitis. Lamivudine is effective in treating hepatitis B reactivation during chemotherapy. Now, the increased use of high-dose regimens with bone marrow or stem-cell support has been shown the drugs toxicities complication more, which does not observed in with conventional doses. Clinical judgment and a high index of suspicion remain critical tool in preventing and treating hepatic manifestations of cancer chemotherapy.

Antineoplastic Agents↗
PubMed2003

[Hepatotoxicity of chemotherapy].

Patients who will receive chemotherapy require careful assessment of liver function prior to treatment to determine which drugs are not appropriate, and which drugs need dose modification. However, if the hepatic parenchymal abnormalities are caused by an underlying neoplasm and the neoplasm is sensitive to the drugs, it may not be necessary to reduce the dose. Clearly, this is an area where clinical judgment must be used to assess the risk/benefit ratio. Treatment of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) involves either the nucleoside analogue lamivudine or interferon alpha. The advantage of lamivudine includes limited adverse effects and the fact that histological improvement has been documented in the majority of patients. Primary prophylaxis with lamivudine may be a well tolerated and effective method to reduce the frequency of chemotherapy-induced HBV reactivation in chronic HbsAg carriers. HbsAg screening is necessary before beginning chemotherapy for non Hodgkin's lymphoma patients. However, the main problem with long-term lamivudine therapy is the emergence of genotypic resistance because of base pair substitution at specific sites within the YMDD locus of the DNA polymerase gene. Significant hepatic dysfunction is uncommon among hepatitis C virus (HCV) infected patients treated with chemotherapy for hematological malignancies. However, infection with elevated AST levels is a significant risk factor for veno-occlusive disease after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Clinical judgment and a high index of suspicion remain critical tools in preventing and treating hepatic manifestations of cancer chemotherapy.

Antineoplastic Agents↗
PubMed2003

[Rituximab].

CHOP has been the standard chemotherapy for aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). However, indolent NHL remains largely an incurable diseases, with nearly static overall survival, and only 40% of patients with aggressive NHL are cured by CHOP. Monoclonal antibodies are an exciting advance in the treatment of lymphoma. Rituximab is a mouse/human chimeric monoclonal antibody that targets the CD20 antigen found on the surface of malignant and normal cells of the B-cell lineage, but not on primitive stem cells or mature plasma cells. Rituximab is safe and well-tolerated, and exhibit little cross-resistance with conventional chemotherapeutic agents. Clinical trials with rituximab indicate that the drug has broad application to NHL, although further clarification is needed to determine its optimal use in many of these clinical settings. In indolent NHL, rituximab has shown useful response rates, both as first-line therapy in relapsed disease. In aggressive lymphomas, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma is the most common form, the addition of rituximab to CHOP chemotherapy significantly lengthens disease-free and overall survival compared to CHOP alone as first line therapy, at least in elderly patients. These included combination with chemotherapy, prolonged or increased dosing regimens, and maintenance therapy, in which rituximab is administered to patients in remission to eliminate minimal residual disease and reduce the risk of relapse. Rituximab in vivo purging and maintenance is also being evaluated in autologous transplantation setting. Newer agents, including radiolabelled antibodies, Immunotoxin-linked antibodies and antibodies against novel target antigens are being tested in on-going clinical trial.

Antibodies, Monoclonal↗