Breast, Ovarian, Uterine, Vaginal, and Vulvar Cancer Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Prevalence, Screening, Treatment, Palliative Care, and Human Resources Training.

Breast, ovarian, uterine, vaginal, and vulvar cancers pose a significant risk to women's lives in low- and middle-income countries due to increasing incidence and presentation with advanced stage disease. There are challenges to screening and early detection and limitations in access to treatment and palliative care, and the current global health care workforce is insufficient. However, there is promise in development of telehealth strategies, task shifting, and increasing number of physician training programs to help address currently unmet needs.

Trends of Molecular Testing for Lung Cancer at the King Faisal Hospital, Kigali: Therapeutic and Survival Implications.

Introduction: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide, both in high and low resource settings. Knowledge has been generated elsewhere regarding molecular subtyping and subsequent targeted therapy development, contributing substantially to patient survival. Little is known on the data around lung cancer and its treatment outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study describes the experience in lung cancer diagnosis, molecular and biomarker testing, and treatment for advanced cases in a single institution in East Africa, between the years 2019 and 2021. Methods: This was a retrospective observational study evaluating patients with metastatic (stage IV) lung cancer. Data on patient demographics, histologic diagnosis, molecular and biomarker testing, and treatment details and outcomes were collected. Molecular test results were reported as positive if there were biomarkers identified (e.g., EGFR, ALK, programmed death-ligand 1), and patients who had negative test results were reported as negative for biomarkers. Results: A total of 14 patients were diagnosed with having stage IV disease, and all were proposed to undergo molecular testing. For 12 (86%) patients who were able to have molecular testing done, EGFR and programmed death-ligand 1 were the most common with 66.7% (N = 8) of tissues with either finding. For all 14 patients, treatment changes were made for eight patients (57.1%) after being primarily placed on a combination of paclitaxel and carboplatin for an average of six cycles. Changing treatment significantly improved the 2-year overall survival (85% versus 25%, p = 0.0006). Conclusions: Despite being the number one cause of mortality, gains are being made in poor-resource settings to improve the survival of patients with advanced lung cancers. Limitations to this quest remain misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis and resource constraints for both molecular testing and subsequent treatments.