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NEW YORK--About 30% of the cancer patients he is asked to evaluate for depression turn out to have delirium, said Memorial Sloan-Kettering psychiatrist William S. Breitbart, MD, at a conference sponsored by Cancer Care, Inc.

WASHINGTON--The Washington Legal Foundation (WLF), a public interest group, has claimed that the FDA violated the First Amendment rights of physicians by denying them access to information about the off-label use of certain oncologic drugs.

he development and testing of a new method of high quality clinical fat/water separated 3D breast MR images was recently announced by Advanced NMR Systems Inc., with its subsidiary, Advanced Mammography Systems Inc.

n NEW YORK--Roughly 70% of cancer patients complain of fatigue at some point in their illness, and a search for reversible causes and multiple etiologies of such fatigue should be a part of standard practice, Ronald Blum, MD, said at a a symposium on fatigue in cancer sponsored by Cancer Care, Inc.

WASHINGTON--The Physician Payment Review Commission (PPRC) released a study describing how managed care plans select and pay physicians in their networks. The study, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research and the Medical College of Virginia, is the first systematic attempt to compare forms of managed care.

NEW ORLEANS--An antifolate that has been "shelved" for decades appears to be more potent than methotrexate in the treatment of childhood leukemias and could prove particularly helpful in patients who are not likely to respond to the traditional agent.

HOUSTON--Passage of the Contract with America legislation, as currently written, could hinder tobacco control efforts for years to come, a Washington, DC, attorney said at the American Society for Preventive Oncology (ASPO) meeting.

BOSTON--During its 48th Cancer Symposium, the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) presented Richard A. Bloch, founder of H&R Block, with its James Ewing Layman's Award, given annually to a nonphysician. The award honors Mr. Bloch for his contribution to improving the care of cancer patients.

CHICAGO--A ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit may put a damper on the class action suit filed in a federal court in Louisiana against tobacco manufacturers.

ATLANTA--To date, more than 58,000 cases of AIDS have been reported among adult and adolescent women in the United States, as well as more than 5,000 cases among children who acquired the disease perinatally. In 1994 alone, more than 14,000 women (25% of the total to date) were reported with AIDS.

NEW ORLEANS--Intensive research into cigarette smoking behaviors has offered a glimpse into the minds of many young smokers. A recent survey shows that most preadolescent smokers already have a favorite brand, suggesting that they are highly affected by the tobacco industry's $5 billion annual marketing budget.

Although several recently published textbooks and handbooks have some variation of "Surgical Oncology" in the title, a new text, Cancer Surgery, edited by McKenna and Murphy, shifts the emphasis from oncology to surgery. This focus is explicitly

ANNAPOLIS--The General Assembly of Maryland passed into law a bill introduced by Governor Parris Glendenning (D) to ban smoking in every indoor workplace in the state, except for restaurants and bars that hold liquor licenses. The bill was a compromise with the Governor's original intention to include restaurants and bars in the smoking ban. Nevertheless, the law, which went into effect March 29, is considered the most restrictive state law in the nation.

BETHESDA, Md--Scientific prog-ress in mapping the human genome has been rapid and remarkable, but development of social and public policy in response to the scientific discoveries has lagged behind and is woefully inadequate, members of the President's Cancer Panel decided after an all-day meeting.

WASHINGTON--As the size of the American family declines, the number of transplants from donors other than human leukocyte antigen (HLA) identical siblings can be expected to rise sharply in coming years, John A. Hansen, MD, said at a meeting on blood and marrow transplantation, sponsored by the Leukemia Society of America.

TORONTO, Canada--Oncologists may someday have a powerful new gene delivery tool to help in the war against cancer--a "gene gun" that blasts pure DNA right inside tumor cells. The gun was described at a media conference held in conjunction with the American Association for Cancer Research meeting.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla--Why would members of a managed care group whose coverage includes mammography not take advantage of the benefit? Focus groups, conducted last year by Sanus, the managed care division of the New York Life Insurance Company, found that the answer was lack of access, said Candy J. Rudy, manager of account services at New York Life/Sanus.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla--When the executive director of a retirement community in Salisbury, NC, arranged to have a mobile mammography van come to the facility to screen the residents and employees, she had to be strongly reminded by her colleagues to visit the van herself. The mammogram Meg Veloff had that day proved to be abnormal and led to early detection and successful treatment of a malignancy.

BOSTON--"Our members must stand up as champions of special training in surgical oncology," Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) president Bernard Gardner, MD, said at the Society's Annual Cancer Symposium. "We must continue to nourish this society because we provide something unique."

WASHINGTON--Bernard Fisher, MD, Distinguished Service Professor of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, has won a court order requiring that scientific misconduct labels be removed from citations of his papers in federal databases (Cancerlit and Medline).

NEW YORK--Judah Folkman, MD, who first theorized that tumors form and metastasize by means of angiogenesis, is the winner of the 18th annual Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research.

Complication rates in 1,000 consecutive patients who underwent radical retropubic prostatectomy for clinically localized prostate cancer between November 1989 and January 1992 were assessed and compared to complication rates in a historical group of patients operated on by primarily the same surgeons prior to 1987. In the contemporary series, there were no operative deaths, only 22% of patients required blood transfusion, and only six (0.6%) patients suffered rectal injuries. Early complications, including myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, bacteremia, and wound infection, occurred in less than 1% of patients. Vesical neck contracture, the most common late complication, developed in 87 patients (8.7%). At 1 year post-surgery, 80% of patients were completely continent, and fewer than 1% were totally incontinent. [ONCOLOGY 9(5):379-389, 1995]

SEATTLE--NeoRx Corporation reports that in phase I/II dose escalation studies, Avicidin produced a 10-fold improvement in tumor-to-blood ratios over conventional radioimmunotherapy, approaching the ratios achieved in animal studies.

"If a women has not had a period in a year, it is unlikely that she will resume menstruation," Elyse E. Lower, MD, said at her poster presentation. "These women require closer monitoring for cardiac risks and osteoporosis, both of which are associated with the onset of menopause."

A new drug-releasing device is effective in treating cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis, a sight-threatening disease that affects one out of four people with AIDS, according to results of a National

SAN DIEGO--Genta Jago, a joint venture between Genta Incorporated and Jagotec AG (Hergiswil, Switzerland), has filed an Investigational New Drug application with the FDA for a controlled-release formulation of zidovudine (AZT), marketed

SAN DIEGO--Genta Incorporated's antisense oligonucleotide targeted against the BCL-2 gene has proved effective against drug-resistant cancers in certain animal models of follicular lymphoma and colon cancer, the company said.

PARIS, France--Although the role of chemotherapy in the management of osteosarcoma was once controversial, a plethora of clinical studies now leave no doubt that chemotherapy dramatically brightens the outlook for patients with this disease.

Doctors soon may be armed with a new technology that allows them to bombard tumors more accurately--and safely--with larger doses of radiation, thanks to research conducted at the University

NEW YORK--Ten women, some of them in wigs, some without eyebrows or eyelashes, sat around a conference table spread with make-up. They were at a free "Improve Your Appearance" clinic at Cancer Care, Inc., where a cosmetician was demonstrating how make-up can improve the special beauty problems that come with chemotherapy.