Advantages and challenges of publishing in medical school

Once accepted into medical school, students find themselves facing numerous expectations: coping with tremendous study burden, completing internships and participating in the race for publishing are only to name a few. It becomes hard for the medical student to focus on research; it is often easier to postpone publication and involvement in research to a later stage in their career. In fact, there are many advantages to publishing in the current publication system but there are many disadvantages as well. With the widespread of social media and open access systems, new challenges have arisen. We will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of publishing in the current system while highlighting the new challenges that the students might need to overcome.Our aim is to provide medical students with information to enhance their understanding of the current publication system and thus most importantly, probe their desire to publish

Inflammatory breast cancer: a race against screening

Inflammatory breast cancer [IBC] is a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer that is characterized by rapid progression, younger age of onset, and poor prognosis. These findings underline a long list of differential diagnosis where clinical, radiological and histological inputs are essential. One limitation to establishing the diagnosis is a poor sensitivity of a test with high negative predictive value. In this paper, we report the case of a rapid growing IBC where two imaging techniques failed at establishing the diagnosis

Early increase of CA 19-9 in advanced pancreatic cancer receiving FOLFIRINOX: Is it a sign of efficacy?

Advanced pancreatic cancer [APC], one of the most aggressive tumors, was considered to be resistant to chemotherapy for decades. FOLFIRINOX [5-FU, leucovorin, irinotecan and oxaliplatin] regimen showed an improvement of quality of life and overall survival in APC patients with good performance status [ECOG < 2]

Material and methods: Seven patients diagnosed with APC, during a six-month period, received FOLFIRINOX as first line treatment. Tumor measurement was assessed every two months and CA 19-9, the specific tumor marker of pancreatic cancer, was assessed every two weeks at every cycle

Results: Three patients out of seven receiving FOLFIRINOX experienced an early and transitory increase of CA 19-9 after the first two cycles resulting in a considerable response with a median survival of 15 months and suggesting a model of tumor release syndrome

Conclusion: This phenomenon of early and transitory increase of CA 19-9 in APC could reflect the high efficacy of FOLFIRINOX and could predict better outcome in these patients