Cushing's disease has not recurred in any patient with an undetectable serum cortisol (< 50 nmol/l) post-operatively. Serum cortisol should be regarded as a tumour marker in Cushing's disease and the aim of transsphenoidal hypophysectomy for Cushing's disease should be to render the immediate post-operative serum cortisol undetectable.
Etoposide is an increasingly used and well-tolerated drug in cancer medicine. Its cytotoxic action is phase-specific and it has demonstrated schedule dependency in both in vitro and animal studies, but clinical evidence of the importance of drug scheduling is uncertain. The two administration schedules of etoposide that have been compared in this randomized study of 39 patients with previously untreated extensive small-cell lung cancer treated with single-agent etoposide were 500 mg/m2 as a continuous intravenous (IV) infusion over 24 hours or five consecutive daily 2-hour infusions each of 100 mg/m2. Both regimens were repeated every 3 weeks, for a maximum of six cycles. Patients received combination chemotherapy with vincristine, doxorubicin, and cyclophosphamide (VAC) or radiotherapy on failure to respond or at relapse, depending on their Karnofsky performance status. The same therapy was used in both arms of the study. All patients are evaluable for response to etoposide. In the 24-hour arm, two patients achieved a partial remission, resulting in an overall response rate of 10%. In the 5-day schedule, 16 patients had a partial response and one had a complete remission, producing an overall response rate of 89%, which was significantly superior to that in the 24-hour arm (P less than .001). The median duration of remission to etoposide in the 5-day arm was 4.5 months. Bone marrow toxicity was similar in both schedules. Etoposide pharmacokinetics were measured in all patients, and total areas under the concentration versus time curves (AUCs) were equivalent in both regimens. This study has clearly demonstrated the importance of etoposide scheduling in humans, and the superiority of five daily infusions over a 24-hour continuous infusion. The response rate to single-agent etoposide using an efficacious schedule in extensive small-cell lung cancer has been determined to be in excess of 80%.
We therefore emphasize the use of techniques other than biopsy in the diagnosis of these patients, note the problems in the management of their fluid control, and highlight the favourable response to a combined chemotherapy-radiotherapy protocol.
We report a patient with a metastatic parathyroid carcinoma and medullary carcinoma of the thyroid. This patient represents a variation of the multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome (MEN) type 2A. There was no evidence of a phaeochromocytoma. The case illustrates the difficulties that may be encountered in localising the source of PTH secretion; the patient underwent four unsuccessful exploratory operations of the neck and mediastinum before further investigations revealed a single metastatic deposit of parathyroid carcinoma involving the first thoracic vertebra. PCR amplification and sequencing of the RET oncogene from the metastatic parathyroid carcinoma and genomic DNA revealed a heterozygous mutation (Cys634Tyr) in exon 11, as has previously been described to occur in MEN 2A. In addition, loss of tumour heterozygosity was demonstrated at loci from chromosomes 1, 2, 3p, 13q and 16p. This represents the first report of a parathyroid carcinoma in a MEN2A patient, in which the multiple allelic deletions are consistent with the generalised losses observed in aggressive tumours.
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