A prospective study on the efficacy of octreotide in the management of malignant bowel obstruction in gynecologic cancer.

OBJECTIVE: Malignant bowel obstruction (MBO), of which symptoms lead to a poor quality of life, is a common and distressing clinical complication in advanced gynecologic cancer. The aim of this study was to prospectively assess the clinical efficacy of octreotide to control vomiting in patients with advanced gynecologic cancer with inoperable gastrointestinal obstruction. METHODS: Patients with advanced gynecologic cancer, who presented at least one episode of vomiting per day due to MBO, were enrolled in this prospective study from 2006 to 2009. Octreotide was administered when necessary at doses starting with 300 µg up to 600 µg a day by continuous infusion for 2 weeks. Primary end point was vomiting control, which was evaluated by common terminology criteria for adverse events version 3 (CTCAE v3.0). Adverse events were also evaluated by CTCAE v3.0. RESULTS: Twenty-two cases were enrolled in this study. Octreotide controlled vomiting in 15 cases (68.2%) to grade 0 and 3 cases (13.6%) to grade 1 on CTCAE v3.0. Overall response rate to octreotide treatment was 81.8% in our patients' cohort. Among 14 cases without nasogastric tube, the overall response rate was 93.1% (13/14). Among 8 cases with nasogastric tube, 4 cases were free of tube with decrease of drainage, and overall response rate was 62.5% (5/8). No major adverse events related to octreotide were reported. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that 300-µg/d dose of octreotide was effective and safe for Japanese patients with MBO by advanced gynecologic cancer. Octreotide could contribute to better quality of life by avoiding placement of nasogastric tube.

Invasive group A streptococcal infection in pregnancy.

We conducted a literature review of 55 pregnancies with symptomatic Group A streptococcus (Streptococcus pyogenes) infection reported in English (20 cases), French (2 cases) and Japanese (33 cases) to seek ways of improving prognosis. Multiparous women (83% [39/47]) in the third trimester (90% [47/52]) were prone to infection from winter to spring (75% [21/28]). Onset was heralded by flu-like symptoms, such as high fever (94% [46/49]), with upper respiratory (40% [22/55]) and/or gastrointestinal symptoms (49% [27/55]). Characteristic findings were early onset of shock (91% [50/55]) and infection-induced strong uterine contraction (73% [40/55]) suggestive of placental abruption. The clinical course was too acute and severe to rescue the mother (58% [32/55] died) and/or infant (66% [39/59] died). However, outcome has improved over the last decade, with rescue of 68% (15/22) of the mothers since 2000, and early use of antibiotics (71% [22/31] survived) and use of intravenous immunoglobulin (91% [10/11] survived) were associated with favourable outcome. Early use of antibiotics and intravenous immunoglobulin may improve outcome of pregnant women suffering from flu-like symptoms, shock and strong uterine contractions suggestive of placental abruption.