When is a cancer patient too old to benefit from a surgical procedure? An answer to that question has been hard to find. Now, researchers from the Minneapolis VAMC are providing data and guidelines to help physicians and surgeons determine optimal treatments for colon and lung cancers.

Controversy continues about when and for whom prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening makes sense. PSA testing often is on lists of “excessive” medical procedures, but primary-care physicians are uncomfortable doing no screening for the common cancer. Two VA clinicians who have researched extensively in the area offer practical advice.

Alarmed by a near tripling of the number of veterans developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) during the past five years, VA has strengthened its programs for the prevention, screening and treatment of veterans with hepatitis C (HCV), which is a major risk for developing the cancer. VA also is revamping practice guidelines for the use of promising new drugs.

WASHINGTON — The number of drug shortages reported annually has nearly tripled over the last five years, with much-needed drugs such as chemotherapy, anesthetics and electrolytes disproportionately affected.

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Half of bladder cancer seen in women can be linked to cigarette smoking, a National Cancer Institute study reports.

BETHESDA, MD — A wave of genetic research projects sparked by last decade’s completion of the Human Genome Project are slowly making their way to fruition. Researchers, many of whom are based at NIH, are busy teasing apart the genetic mechanisms that contribute to disease, as well as finding ways to give physicians the ability to use genomic data to directly treat patients.

WASHINGTON — VA oncology care was found to be some of the best in the nation, according to a new study looking at older men treated for cancer at VA facilities.

WASHINGTON — When Mike Partain got the news from his doctor in 2007 that he had male breast cancer, he was shocked. There was no history of breast cancer in his family and certainly not among men.

WASHINGTON—Cancer organizations were pleased that funding was not reduced for the peer-reviewed prostate, breast and ovarian cancer programs in DoD’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) in the FY 2011 Defense budget.

PITTSBURGH—In 2000, if you were a patient at the Pittsburgh VAMC and were found to have a lung nodule, it took an average of six weeks to be evaluated for lung cancer. With the possibility of being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease hanging over your head, those six weeks could seem like an eternity.