BACKGROUND Optimal treatment for recurrent primary central nervous system lymphomas (PCNSLs) has not been defined yet and there is no general consensus about the salvage chemotherapy after high-dose methotrexate (HD-MTX)-based chemotherapy. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of procarbazine, lomustine, and vincristine (PCV) chemotherapy for recurrent PCNSLs...

SUMMARY Long-term survival of relapsed Wilms' tumor patients is about 40% to 70%. Modern second-line treatment consists of either (a) salvage chemotherapy+/-radiation therapy (CT) or (b) chemotherapy followed by high-dose chemotherapy and autologous hematopoietic stem cell rescue (ASCR). Here, we conduct an individual patient data meta-analysis on 100 patients collected from 6 studies to determ...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES Gemcitabine (GEM) is a gold-standard chemotherapy agent for advanced pancreatic cancer. Because of the malignant character of the disease, nearly all patients show disease progression despite treatment with GEM-based chemotherapy; therefore, second-line chemotherapy may be beneficial for these patients. We report a retrospective analysis of 5 patients with advanced pancrea...

INTRODUCTION Management of malignant tumors of the hand and wrist is challenging and is generally approached by limb salvage or amputation. With advances in care, amputation has been superseded by limb salvage as the treatment of choice. METHODS A narrative literature review was performed to identify articles on the topic of management of soft tissue tumors of the upper extremity, including s...

BACKGROUND Malignant ovarian germ cell tumors are rare, and often treatable with surgery and chemotherapy. Few data are available for treatment of platinum-resistant tumors. CASE A 31 year old gravida 0 with a 20 cm pelvic mass was found to have a malignant ovarian germ cell tumor after she underwent debulking surgery. She initially responded to chemotherapy; however her AFP began to rise bef...

No standard has been established for salvage therapy in gemcitabine refractory advanced urothelial cancer. We report the complete response to FOLFOX4 therapy of a metastatic urothelial cancer patient, for whom adjuvant gemcitabine plus cisplatin combination chemotherapy had failed. A 54-year-old male patient with urothelial cancer (transitional cell carcinoma) in the right kidney underwent thre...

CONTEXT Poorly differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma of the pancreas is a rare and aggressive tumor. The combination of etoposide and cisplatin is considered as the first-line treatment, but no recommendations exist for further treatment after progression. CASE SERIES We report here case series of three patients who received gemcitabine as salvage chemotherapy in patients with poorly differ...

Although front-line chemotherapy cures most men with testicular germ cell tumors, salvage therapy is still important in a small but significant minority. Second-line conventional-dose or high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell rescue may cure 25%-50% of patients. New chemotherapeutic agents, including the taxanes gemcitabine and oxaliplatin, have added to the therapeutic armamentarium. Salvage su...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE High-dose chemotherapy and autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) has become the standard approach for most patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin's disease. Disease status at transplant has been correlated with outcome following ABMT. In light of this, we employ mini-BEAM (BCNU, etoposide, cytarabine and melphalan) salvage therapy in order to achieve a sta...

Salvage chemotherapy for metastatic breast cancer includes regimens for hormonal responsive patients and patients refractory to cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, and fluorouracil (CMF) or fluorouracil, doxorubicin, and cyclophosphamide (FAC). For hormone responsive patients, progestins, aminoglutethimide with hydrocortisone, and androgens provide second-line therapy and produce objective remissio...