Home Forums All Categories Articles of Interest UMMMM..i’m not going here!!

  • sara.anne's avatar

    sara.anne

    Member
    January 29, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    Ahh, gee, Mike. Don’t hold back…tell us how you REALLY feel about this!!

    SA :laugh:


    Diagnosis 2-08 Small papillary TCC; CIS
    BCG; BCG maintenance
    Vice-President, American Bladder Cancer Society
    Forum Moderator
  • mmc's avatar

    mmc

    Member
    January 29, 2011 at 8:31 pm

    Cynthia,

    If you sign up for UroToday (just click the link and it will take you to a login screen where you can join for free) you can see the title, the article, and the names.

    First sign up. Then come back to this site and click on Pat’s original link. It will then take you directly to the abstract.

    In my opinion, it is a crap study though with insufficient data presented and way overly general.

    Mike


    Age 54
    10/31/06 dx CIS (TisG3) non-invasive (at 47)
    9/19/08 TURB/TUIP dx Invasive T2G3
    10/8/08 RC neobladder(at 49)
    2/15/13 T4G3N3M1 distant metastases(at 53)
    9/2013 finished chemo -cancer free again
    1/2014 ct scan results….distant mets
    2/2014 ct result…spread to liver, kidneys, and lymph system

    My opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of ABLCS or anyone else. I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV.
  • Cyn2's avatar

    Cyn2

    Member
    January 29, 2011 at 6:37 pm

    Hi!

    Hey, can someone post the title of the study? (Also, last named–spelled correctly of one of the authors)?

    I can find it easily in some databases that I have access to.

    I was trying to interpret the gist of the article through the clues in your posts and responses.

    Does this article have to do with a particular R/C longevity study? (Again…I may be way off).

    I know, I know…I can register…but I’m soooo weary of the regiestering process. I also get BC alerts (which includes UroToday). I’ll go see if I can see anything there.

    I’m really curious now!

    Cynthia2

  • mmc's avatar

    mmc

    Member
    January 28, 2011 at 3:10 pm

    Thanks Sara Anne! Good to know it’s not just me! :)

    You know, if they could give me their raw data, add in the years from 1999 through 2010, I’ll bet I could now load all that up into Excel and create some nifty pivot tables that could possibly show some insightful information from the data. :) LOL!

    It’s like when you read “side effects” on drug information sheets. Is there such a thing as a drug (including placebo) that does not have headaches, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, weight gain, weight loss, dizziness, etc., listed as possible side effects?

    When they do the testing, people report ANY change they experience during the testing period and who knows what was truly related to the medication as opposed to “just happened to happen at the same time as they were taking the medication (or placebo)”?

    Kind of the same thing with the general category of “complications related to a cystectomy”. Without categorizing those into mild, moderate, severe, very severe, what good is the data?

    Oh well…
    These guys all have to (as you often say) “publish or perish” so some amount of garbage publications are certainly going to be out there. Thing is, these things should get scored by some independent group (to avoid “I’ll give you good marks on your paper if you’ll do the same for me”) and drivel like this one should go into the category of “Useless paper that raises more questions about the competence of the author(s) than anything else”.

    Oh well…

    It was fun critiquing it anyway. :D

    Mike


    Age 54
    10/31/06 dx CIS (TisG3) non-invasive (at 47)
    9/19/08 TURB/TUIP dx Invasive T2G3
    10/8/08 RC neobladder(at 49)
    2/15/13 T4G3N3M1 distant metastases(at 53)
    9/2013 finished chemo -cancer free again
    1/2014 ct scan results….distant mets
    2/2014 ct result…spread to liver, kidneys, and lymph system

    My opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of ABLCS or anyone else. I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV.
  • sara.anne's avatar

    sara.anne

    Member
    January 28, 2011 at 2:13 am

    Mike, that was a BRILLIANT analysis. And yes, someone published rather than perished, but maybe the promotion committee should read the darn thing!!

    Sara Anne


    Diagnosis 2-08 Small papillary TCC; CIS
    BCG; BCG maintenance
    Vice-President, American Bladder Cancer Society
    Forum Moderator
  • mmc's avatar

    mmc

    Member
    January 27, 2011 at 10:31 pm

    They don’t say what they died of in the article. I’m not sure what this really tells us. Could it be they are doing lots of cystectomies on people who didn’t have long to live anyway?

    I hate when these guys publish studies just to publish studies. Maybe I’m reading wrong but if people tend to get cystectomies (on average) when they are a bit older, then it would seem important to know if they died of bladder cancer anyway or if they were hit by a truck or died of a heart attack or what have you.

    Also, how severe were the complications? Bowel complication can be from “I seem to have to poop more often than before” or “I seem to be more sensitive to dairy products” up to “I’ve needed sixteen more surgeries on my bowels because the stinking surgeon screwed up and attached my bowels to other organs and forget to sew me up”.

    With 80% of the patients dying at a mean time of 4.1 years (range 0.1 to 28.1) that doesn’t sound like a very good statistic at all. But then again, how many of that population died of bladder cancer?

    Hmmmmm….

    I might be missing the point of the study, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it’s supposed to be saying.
    Maybe it’s because I’ve been neck deep in excel spreadsheets and pivot tables for the last week and my eyes are in upside down. Probably best to not try to figure these articles out when I’m kind of brain dead. I wonder if the guys who did the study would consider that to be a complication of cystectomy also. I’m pretty sure it’s from messing around with too many numbers in too many spreadsheets for too many days, but what do I know? I’m not a research doctor. :)

    Mike


    Age 54
    10/31/06 dx CIS (TisG3) non-invasive (at 47)
    9/19/08 TURB/TUIP dx Invasive T2G3
    10/8/08 RC neobladder(at 49)
    2/15/13 T4G3N3M1 distant metastases(at 53)
    9/2013 finished chemo -cancer free again
    1/2014 ct scan results….distant mets
    2/2014 ct result…spread to liver, kidneys, and lymph system

    My opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of ABLCS or anyone else. I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV.
  • 's avatar

    Guest
    January 27, 2011 at 9:58 pm

    makes you wonder why they published it doesn’t it…it just came out. Not the greatest stats!
    pat

  • sara.anne's avatar

    sara.anne

    Member
    January 27, 2011 at 6:49 pm

    Yeh, that data goes from 1980-1998? Meaning the newest is 13 years old? In medicine, that is HUGE. Don’t think you can compare what is done today…IN TOP CENTERS…with those statistics.

    Sara Anne


    Diagnosis 2-08 Small papillary TCC; CIS
    BCG; BCG maintenance
    Vice-President, American Bladder Cancer Society
    Forum Moderator
  • billm's avatar

    billm

    Member
    January 27, 2011 at 3:34 am

    WOW 15.5 years for the lucky ones… Is it the hospital or the era? A few people I worked with in the early 80’s got BC, 2 years was about it for RC back then.


    5.24.10 Final staging T2G3 7.28.10 Started Gemcitabine, Cisplatin neoadjunctive chemotherapy
    11.2.10 RC with NEO 11.18.11 First year CT shows possible liver tumor
    12.8.11 Confirmation of TCC BC mets to the liver 6.27.12 Final round of Dose Dense MVAC
    7.26.12 Final scans showed no tumor or no metabolic response10.18.12 Wife leaves, now a single dad
    10.31.12 New scans show metastic return to liver 2.4.13 New scans for treatment, no other sites found
    2.20.13 New chemo regiment started, will run at least 12 weeks

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