Immunocompromised patients with cancer are three times more likely to die from complications of the COVID-19 coronavirus. New resources from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide ideas for preventing infections like COVID-19 in patients with cancer.
To improve clinical trial availability, effectiveness, and diversity in the era of the COVID-19 coronavirus, National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded clinical trials should adjust their design to increase use of telemedicine and remote informed consent, among other strategies, several NCI department leaders wrote in a commentary in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Shortly after declaring victory in the 2020 president election, the Biden-Harris transition team created a bipartisan COVID-19 advisory board. Staffed by experts, the board was hailed as a science-driven committee eager to flatten the curve. However, it had one downfall: it lacked a nurse. In response to a viral petition for nurse representation, the transition team appointed Seattle, WA, nurse Jane Hopkins, RNMH, to the advisory board on November 28, 2020.
On December 28, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that Sunstar Americas, Inc., expanded its October 27, 2020, voluntary recall of Paroex® chlorhexidine gluconate oral Rinse USP, 0.12%, because of possible contaminated with the bacteria Burkholderia lata.
Wonder Woman, Superman, the Flash! Characters like those have superpowers and save people, but they are limited by fiction. Nurses are real people doing superhuman achievements every day, often with little recognition. To pay homage to the most trusted profession, Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh, PA, partnered with Marvel to produce a comic book worthy of real heroes. The Vitals: True Nurse Stories (2020), includes three stories based on personal accounts from the children of nurses on the front lines of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Caring for patients with cancer is a complex subspecialty of nursing. In most of their day-to-day work, oncology nurses function independently and require time management, communication, and prioritization skills in addition to extensive clinical knowledge and expertise.
A new year is generally a time for hope, evaluating the previous year’s achievements, and setting new goals. Last year changed that somewhat when we put many of our goals on hold to immediately respond to the pandemic and the needs of our patients, each other, and ourselves. This year, we hope that things will be better.
First-line therapy combining nivolumab with chemotherapy improved median overall survival rates in patients with PD-L1-expressing gastric cancer by 3.3 months in a large international, multicenter trial. The findings were reported during the 2020 European Society for Medical Oncology virtual meeting.
When used in combination with fulvestrant, alpelisib (Piqray®) produced complete or partial responses in 29% of patients with PIK3CA-altered, estrogen receptor-positive advanced breast cancer in clinical trials. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it for use in 2019.
The November 2020 presidential election saw a historic turnout at the polls. Before election day, more than 99 million of the 240 million registered American voters had already cast their ballots, and some predicted that as many as 155 million voters would exercise their constitutional franchise to make their voices heard, a record 65% of the electorate. The distinct differences between the two major presidential candidates indicated that people were engaged and took to heart the grand idea of participatory democracy.