Summary

Original source:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=34885

Details

• Johnson, now 33, has suffered since 1986 from the effects of ototoxicity, a condition in which platinum-based chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin and the more common cisplatin, damage the tiny hair cells in the inner ear that vibrate in response to sound waves.
• Despite surgery and intense radiation therapy to remove the brain tumor, Johnson says the hearing loss resulting from the chemotherapy for the shoulder tumor has been the most disabling.
• "What I don't think the general public understands is that surviving cancer isn't the same as a broken leg.
• The research found that a well-known classification system doctors use for reporting toxicities in patients, the National Cancer Institute's Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events, or CTCAE, doesn't consider high-frequency hearing loss, allowing the magnitude of ototoxicity in children treated with platinum agents to be miscalculated.
• A 1998 study that evaluated the educational performance and social-emotional functioning of about 1,200 children with minimal hearing loss found that 37 percent failed at least one grade in school compared with the normal rate of 3 percent.
• OHSU researchers tested the hearing of 67 patients, ages 8 months to 23 years, who received platinum-based chemotherapy.
• The study found that while the ASHA criteria and CTCAE grading scale were similar in how they defined hearing loss progression, results from clinical trials often focus only on CTCAE grade 3 toxicity, which represents hearing loss requiring therapeutic intervention, and grade 4, which requires a cochlear implant and additional speech and language development services.
• The OHSU study team is developing protocols for a clinical trial of a second potential chemo-protectant called N-acetylcysteine, or NAC.
• The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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