http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. A new study finds that lung cancer patients treated in hospitals that care for a high percentage of uninsured and Medicaid-insured patients, so-called "high safety-net burden facilities," were significantly less likely to undergo surgery that was intended to cure the cancer compared to patients treated at low safety-net burden facilities. This difference persisted even after controlling for other factors that significantly decreased the likelihood of curative-intent surgery, such as race, insurance status, stage, and female gender as well as other hospital characteristics. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-hospitals-resort-quality-lung-cancer.html Cancer Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:54:49 EST news234784472 High epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression was a good predictor of which lung cancer patients would survive longer when cetuximab (Erbitux) was added to first-line chemotherapy, according to research presented at the 14th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Amsterdam, hosted by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-high-egfr-predictor-survival-cetuximab.html Cancer Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:51:10 EST news229060256 (Medical Xpress) -- Some of the most effective and expensive cancer drugs, dubbed "smart drugs" for their ability to stop tumors by targeting key drivers of cancer cell growth, are not effective in some patients. In two related studies, Yale School of Medicine researchers examined one such driver, the EGF receptor (EGFR), and found that a decoy receptor might be limiting the amount of drug that gets to the intended target. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-cancer-smart-drugs.html Cancer Wed, 11 May 2011 05:39:02 EST news224311055 In the first large trial of its kind in the United States, researchers have shown that estrogen-lowering drugs can shrink tumors and reduce mastectomy rates for patients with stage 2 or 3 breast cancer. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-estrogen-lowering-drugs-mastectomy-breast-cancer.html Cancer Mon, 09 May 2011 16:30:49 EST news224177415