Hi ,

Welcome back to the Oncology Insights Newsletter which fosters your continuous growth in oncology pharmacy practice

Last time you learned about hiccups with dexamethasone, tumor lysis syndrome in testicular cancer, and why some patients with testicular cancer get 2 versions of cycle 1

This week we'll talk about ovarian cancer mortality, TAPS, and celebrate an anniversary

Have a great week!

Kelley

🧠 IPS (Insight, Pearl, Sundry)

Insight

Ovarian cancer has the highest mortality of all gynecologic malignancies

This is partly because signs and symptoms are non-specific, including abdominal bloating and pain, urinary urgency, and early satiety. This delays diagnosis leading to later stages which are harder to treat.

The high mortality rates is not because it’s unresponsive to initial treatment with surgery and chemotherapy

In fact, most patients with advanced disease (~80%) achieve an objective response to chemotherapy!

Unfortunately, 85% of these patients will have recurrence after primary treatment, with each recurrence becoming less and less responsive to treatment

Preventing recurrence with maintenance therapies, like PARP inhibitors, and improving recurrence therapies is vital to improve survival

Pearl

Have you had patients treated with paclitaxel or docetaxel complain of aching muscles or joints after their infusion?

This is a phenomenon called TAPS, taxane acute pain syndrome, and it occurs in up to 86% of patients receiving taxanes 🤯 - crazy high, right?

Taxanes are known for their neurotoxicity but this is different

It’s a syndrome of myalgias/arthralgias that usually starts 24-48 hours after administration and can last up to 7 days

One prospective study looked at the most common terms used to describe this syndrome and found these 👇

😬 Aching (most common)

🔥 Burning

🔀 Radiating

🗡️ Sharp

They also found that patients with TAPS in cycle 1 was predictive of it in subsequent cycles

There is a short write up about TAPS in JHOP 2017

There are a lot of toxicities our patients can experience and seeing them with your own eyes 👀 is a great learning opportunity

Chat with your nursing colleagues and ask them to share these when reported and then go talk to the patient and hear their experience first hand

Sundry

KelleyCPharmD turns 5 this week 🎉

At the beginning of this journey, the universe kept nudging me to see the gap that existed - that pharmacists working in oncology without residency training needed to learn the details of cancer care but they didn’t know how or weren’t making progress on their own

I had the knowledge and experience in oncology but not in starting a business

But I jumped in and started educating myself, talking to pharmacists about what they needed, and recruited 8 innovative pharmacists to help build the first iteration of my program

Since then, more than 150 pharmacists have gone through it

Not only have they learned and developed their oncology muscles, I have learned and developed my own about what it takes to make progress on your goals

Check out the 25 lessons learned so far that you can apply to your own career

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