Important studies from 2010

A few interesting papers and studies I wanted to bring to your attention: What are the top medical papers of the past year?

They included one cancer study: the Temel article of non–small cell lung cancer patients that found that early palliative care was beneficial to quality of life and OS. I also think, as one of the commenters pointed out, the article by Iacobuzio-Donahue from Nature showing that pancreas cancer frequently is more slowly progressive than originally thought was also important. At least for my practice, this changes what I tell patients about their cancer, and has implications for screening in the future.

I love this article about slowly progressive weight training in breast cancer survivors, which under close supervision did not increase the risk of lymphedema. This is fabulous news because for years those women have been told to avoid all weight lifting as it might increase their arm swelling. One less limitation is a fantastic thing for survivors. An important caveat to point out is that none of the participants in this study had baseline lymphedema at entry into the study.

This is the time of year when many cancer centers have a memorial service for those patients we have lost over the last year. Here is one heme/onc social worker's reflection on losing her first patient. I can't say I specifically recall who was my first, but I do have several each year that will stay with me a very long time.

Disclosure: Dr. LoConte writes for Faculty of 1000 which published the abovementioned list.