Total neoadjuvant chemotherapy with FLOT scheme in resectable adenocarcinoma of the gastro-oesophageal junction or gastric adenocarcinoma: impact on pathological complete response and safety.

BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer is the fifth cause of cancer incidence worldwide. Multidisciplinary approaches that improve the survival are needed. Perioperative chemotherapies show improvement in pathological complete remission (pCR) and overall survival (OS), but less than 50% of the patients completed the chemotherapeutic regimen. The recent 5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, oxaliplatin, docetaxel-4 (FLOT4) study shows OS 50 months and pCR 16.6%, but only 46% of the patients completed pre- and postoperative treatment. This case series report evaluated pCR and safety in patients that received complete preoperative chemotherapeutic with FLOT. METHODS: Patients received eight cycles FLOT regimen before surgery. Each cycle comprised 50 mg/m2 docetaxel intravenous (iv) on day 1, 85 mg/m2 oxaliplatin iv on day 1, 200 mg/m2 leucovorin iv on day 1 and 2,600 mg/m2 5-fluorouracil iv in a 24-hour infusion on day 1, every 2 weeks. RESULTS: Fifty-nine patients were evaluated, 58 patients received preoperative cycles. Thirty-one patients received all eight cycles of preoperative therapy. 65.5% patients presented any major adverse event. Thirty-nine patients underwent surgery. Thirty-three biopsy reports were obtained. Six patients (18.2%) presented pCR, 13 patients (39.4%) had no lymph node involvement. OS was 21.32 months. Patients with histology of signet ring carcinoma cells had a shorter survival than other histologies. CONCLUSION: Total neoadjuvant with FLOT chemotherapy presents an adequate safety profile, a similar pathologic regression rate, and a slightly higher rate of completing treatment to report in perioperative FLOT regimen studies. A prospective clinical study with suitable diagnostic, staging tools and an adequate follow-up may prove total neoadjuvant chemotherapy's efficacy.

Triple-negative breast cancer: the reality in Chile and in Latin America.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. While triple-negative breast cancer is less common among various sub-types of breast cancer, it tends to affect younger women and is more aggressive, having a higher rate of early recurrence and mortality compared to other sub-types. We know about the association between triple-negative breast cancer and BRCA mutations, which are highly prevalent in founding populations of European origin, but the true prevalence of these mutations in Latin American populations is unknown. There is also very little information about the demographic and epidemiological aspects of triple-negative breast cancer in Latin America, which we will try to summarise in this article. In addition, we will try to provide a brief introduction to the most common recommendations for treating this histological class in Latin America.

Is percutaneous closure of the left atrial appendage comparable to anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation?

For most atrial fibrillation patients oral anticoagulation constitutes the standard treatment to prevent stroke. However, they carry a risk of bleeding, which is why alternative treatments have been put into practice, such as percutaneous closure of the left atrial appendage. It is not clear whether this is as effective as the conventional treatment with anticoagulants. Searching in Epistemonikos database, which is maintained by screening 30 databases, we identified three systematic reviews including only one pertinent randomized controlled trial. We combined the evidence and generated a summary of findings following the GRADE approach. We concluded that percutaneous left atrial appendage occlusion may decrease stroke and mortality, but the certainty of the evidence is low. The effect on other outcomes is not clear because the certainty of the evidence is very low.

La anticoagulación oral constituye el tratamiento estándar para la prevención de accidentes vasculares encefálicos en la mayoría de los pacientes con fibrilación auricular. Sin embargo, conlleva un riesgo importante de sangrado, por lo que han aparecido nuevas alternativas terapéuticas, como el cierre percutáneo de la orejuela de la aurícula izquierda. No existe claridad sobre si este procedimiento es comparable a la terapia convencional con tratamiento anticoagulante. Utilizando la base de datos Epistemonikos, la cual es mantenida mediante búsquedas en 30 bases de datos, identificamos tres revisiones sistemáticas que incluyen sólo un estudio aleatorizado pertinente. Realizamos un resumen de los resultados utilizando el método GRADE. Se concluye que el cierre percutáneo de la orejuela de la aurícula izquierda podría disminuir el número total de accidentes vasculares y la mortalidad, pero la certeza de la evidencia es baja. Existe incertidumbre sobre su efecto sobre otros desenlaces porque la certeza de la evidencia es muy baja.