Blog
NCCP calls for more ‘in-house’ compounding of anti-cancer therapies
“Building greater resilience in hospitals can be achieved by increasing in-house compounding of SACT(Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy) within dedicated aseptic compounding units (ACUs)”.
This “helps mitigate the risks associated with relying on outsourced supply chains, which are often fragile and vulnerable to disruptions”.
@mcacrthymt7 “The advantage of on-site compounding is that dose changes or treatment change decisions can be made in real time. Outsourcing to private companies in most cases means ordering SACT 2 weeks in advance. It increases inflexibility in the system. The objective should be to increase efficiency. Maximise onsite SACT compounding.”
Evaluation of user experiences, perceptions and attitudes towards faecal immunochemical testing (FIT) for risk-stratified colonoscopy in people with Lynch syndrome
Objective: This study evaluates the experiences, perceptions, and attitudes of people with Lynch syndrome (LS) towards faecal immunochemical testing (FIT) as an adjunct to colonoscopy for colorectal cancer surveillance.
Conclusions: FIT is widely perceived as an acceptable supplemental tool among surveyed people with LS, who appreciate its potential to reduce intervals between colonoscopies without compromising surveillance quality.
Ongoing patient engagement is crucial to addressing concerns about FIT’s reliability. Future research should evaluate long-term outcomes and explore diverse population perspectives to guide FIT implementation in LS surveillance.
Outcomes with immunotherapy between Lynch syndrome vs non-Lynch syndrome microsatellite instability-high colorectal cancer.
Conclusions: In this study, we found that patient treated with ICIs have similar outcomes in the presence of germline vs. somatic MMR mutations in MSI-H CRC. The presence of an associated BRAF V600E mutation, which occurs in non-LS MSI-H CRC conferred worse outcomes.
https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2024.42.3_suppl.175
Immunotherapy increases the body’s ability to identify and attack these cells, and cancers that have high microsatellite instability actually help this effort. As the cells continue to mutate and replicate DNA several times, they create more and more proteins that the body doesn’t recognise as normal.
Before immunotherapy, MSI used to be very bad news for patients with advanced cancers. Because they can mutate rapidly, cancer cells can begin to differentiate from each other and change significantly. Cancer can, for example, gain the ability to metastasize to a different organ or better evade the immune system. With advances in immunotherapy, that prognosis is changing, but that is a very recent shift in just the last few years. Now we know that if you have cancer with MSI, even if it’s late stage, it has a good chance of responding to immunotherapy.
Cancer treatment in the last 6 months of life: when inaction can outperform action
The implications of the decision to treat a terminally ill patient are multidimensional, but the ultimate goal should be to help patients with a peaceful life-death transition.
To that end, education and training of oncologists on end of life care, managing expectations of patients and communication skills are important, as is the role of the media in promoting the importance and complexities of navigating quality end of life care and discouraging the ‘war’ metaphor for cancer.
It is also the case that prescribing drugs in the last 6 months of life constitutes a substantial proportion of total healthcare costs, and we may be able to avoid some of these costs if patients better understand the benefit/risk trade-off offered by anticancer drugs tested in this population.
Yes, I still think about cancer every day!
“There is wisdom in survival. There is wisdom in grief, in forgiveness, in having lived through things that could have broken me. That wisdom doesn’t belong in a drawer. It belongs in the world, where it might do some good.”
Cancer treatment is hard. Life when active treatment ends can be harder. In other words, the work continues. We all do this work and incorporating differently.
NCCP launches three HSE National Clinical Guidelines
The previous and current National Cancer Strategies recommend that the NCCP develop guidelines for cancer care to improve the quality of care delivered to patients.
To date, nine national clinical guidelines for cancer have been developed, with various updates throughout the years and further updates to continue.
National Clinical Guidelines play a pivotal role in shaping cancer care. They offer patient-centred, evidence-based recommendans that enhance the quality of care provided to patients. They also empower patients to actively participate in decisions relating to their care.
The NCCP recognises the importance of patient input and their role as key stakeholders in developing guidelines. Several patients were invited to contribute to the development of these guidelines which has helped to capture important quality of life issues and patient values.
The guidelines are intended for use by all healthcare professionals involved in multiple stages of the cancer pathway for the three most common cancers in Ireland. They will also be of interest to patients undergoing diagnosis, staging and treatment of these cancers, and their families and carers.
Awash in a Sea of Cancer Misinformation
Experts warn a lot of the information patients encounter online could do much more harm than good
Just because a post has a lot of views or likes, doesn’t mean the information it contains is accurate. In fact, the opposite may be true.
The internet is full of posts and sites designed to sell supplements or other products that supposedly treat or prevent cancer. In that case, a patient may spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on unproven, often useless products, but there are other, more serious risks to following bad information online.
To get the most current and accurate information pertaining to your unique diagnosis, you should turn first and often to the medical professionals on your cancer care team.
Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors and Their Side Effects
Checkpoint inhibitors don’t kill cancer cells directly. They work by helping the immune system to better find and attack the cancer cells, wherever they are in the body.
Part of how the immune system does this is by using “checkpoint” proteins on immune cells. The checkpoints act like switches that need to be turned on (or off) to start an immune response.
But cancer cells sometimes find ways to use these checkpoints to avoid being attacked by the immune system. Medicines can be designed to target these checkpoint proteins. These drugs are called immune checkpoint inhibitors
It’s very important to report any new side effects to someone on your health care team as soon as possible. If serious side effects do occur, treatment may need to be stopped and you might be given high doses of corticosteroids to suppress your immune system..
PREDI-LYNCH project
PREDI-LYNCH sets out to make a difference for people with Lynch syndrome (LS) by developing and implementing novel, non-invasive early detection methods for colorectal, endometrial and urothelial cancers in patients with LS. The research team addresses an unmet medical need in providing an innovative approach to biomarker discovery for early-stage cancers in LS patients.
PREDI-LYNCH will focus on improving cancer surveillance in LS to detect cancers at an early stage, utilising effective and minimally invasive strategies, so as to improve patient outcomes and compliance.
- Develops non-invasive liquid biopsy tests for early cancer detection in individuals with Lynch syndrome.
- Combines artificial intelligence, biomarker technology, and clinical expertise to improve the quality of life and healthcare for at-risk groups.
- Is a collaborative consortium involving 28 organisations from 16 European countries.
- Received €13.6 million in Horizon Europe funding. Horizon Europe is the EU’s key research and innovation funding programme aimed at promoting scientific breakthroughs and collaborations to solve global challenges.
- The project will begin in June 2025 and end in summer 2031.
Lynch Syndrome Ireland 