Faculty Bibliography

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major health problem worldwide with limited systemic therapies available. Immunotherapy is a fast-moving field that is quickly evolving as a treatment for HCC with three recent clinical trials published treating HCC with immune checkpoint inhibitors with promising results. Checkpoint inhibition may lead to a unique adverse event profile with the potential to cause immune-related adverse events by unbalancing the immune system. Here, we report a case of a 61-year-old male with advanced HCC who developed a shellfish allergy after completing three cycles of combination of tremelimumab and durvalumab therapy.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major cause of cancer-associated mortality worldwide and is expected to rise. Patients with early-stage disease may have a good prognosis with a 5-year survival rate of greater than 70%. However, the majority of patients are diagnosed with late-stage disease with a dismal overall survival rate of less than 16%. Therefore, there is a great need for advances in the treatment of advanced HCC, which for approximately the past decade, has been sorafenib. Immunotherapy is an evolving cancer treatment and has shown promise in treating patients with advanced HCC. In this review, we discuss the current standard of care for advanced HCC and then discuss the evolving role of immunotherapies.

Peritoneal metastasis is a common final pathway in patients with gastric adenocarcinoma. Microscopic evidence of early peritoneal dissemination of gastric cancer is present in a substantial proportion of patients presumed to have localized disease. Prognosis is poor even for patients with microscopic and low-volume peritoneal carcinomatosis highlighting the need for a more effective treatment strategy. Treatment of peritoneal carcinomatosis with intraperitoneal chemotherapy has been evaluated in gastric cancer and is associated with improved survival in selected patients. We hypothesize that removal of the primary tumor combined with treatment of low-volume peritoneal metastasis may improve survival in patients with gastric cancer. Our group is investigating the role of heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy administered at time of gastrectomy in patients with gastric adenocarcinoma and metastasis limited to the peritoneum. To date, trials dedicated to the study of regional therapy for peritoneal metastasis due to gastric cancer have originated primarily in Asian centers. Although the incidence of gastric cancer is relatively low in the United States, mortality rates are high and the need is real for prospective study of intraperitoneal chemotherapy in patients with this deadly disease.

BACKGROUND:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major health problem worldwide with increasing incidence rates. As HCC traditionally occurs in chronically inflamed livers, this inflammation aids to drive oncogenesis and often renders these lesions to be immunogenic and therefore potential targets for immunotherapy. As patients with HCC generally have underlying liver dysfunction, we sought to determine if immune checkpoint inhibitors were safe to use in patients with HCC as compared to melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in terms of the gastrointestinal side effects of elevation of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and diarrhea as well as patients who drop out of the study due to drug toxicity and death secondary to drug toxicity. METHODS:A literature review was performed for clinical trials that have been completed with single agent immune checkpoint inhibitors for patients with HCC, melanoma, and NSCLC. Gastrointestinal related adverse events including elevation of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and diarrhea were analyzed as well as those patients who were taken off therapy secondary to drug related toxicity and patients who died as a result of therapy. RESULTS:We found that although patients with HCC treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors have a substantial increase in AST/ALT as compared to patients with melanoma and NSCLC, this does not cause the patients to come off therapy or cause death secondary to drug toxicity. CONCLUSIONS:We propose immune checkpoint inhibitors are safe to pursue in the treatment of HCC.

At many institutions, it is common practice for trauma patients with traumatic intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) to receive routine repeat head computed tomographic (CT) scans after the initial CT scan, regardless of symptoms, to evaluate progression of the injury. The purpose of this study was to assess quantifiable risk factors (age, anticoagulation, gender) that could place patients at greater risk for progression of injury, thus requiring surgical intervention (craniotomy, craniectomy) for which serial CT scanning would be useful. From January 2014 to June 2015, a total of 211 patients presented with traumatic ICH and 198 were eligible for inclusion. Twenty-six patients required operative intervention for ICH. One of 26 patients went to the operating room as a result of repeat head CT scans without associated mental status change, change in neurological examination, or associated symptoms such as nausea or vomiting. Significant changes in patient management due to routine repeat CT scans were not observed. There were no statistically significant risk factors identified to place patients at higher risk for progression of disease. The data from this analysis emphasized the importance of nursing care in identifying and relaying changes in patient condition to the trauma team.