Vol 3 No 1 (2024): Januari – April

Volume 3 opens on lung cancer, and on the distance between what a tumour is and what can actually be sampled.

A cohort from H. Adam Malik General Hospital, Medan, identifies prognostic factors in lung adenocarcinoma treated with chemotherapy and EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors. A companion study weighs liquid biopsy against tissue biopsy for EGFR mutation analysis, in a disease where advanced patients are often too unwell to biopsy and where one piece of tissue may not represent a heterogeneous tumour.

Two studies address what happens around treatment rather than in it: recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma after chemoradiation, where roughly one patient in ten recurs locally into a nasopharynx left fibrotic and poorly vascularised, and omega-3 supplementation for body weight in a population where cancer-related malnutrition affects between 20% and 70% of patients.

Two reviews close on detection. One examines screening for lung cancer in women who have never smoked, a group whose mortality has been rising; the other covers frozen-section staining in Mohs micrographic surgery, the step that makes margin control possible in non-melanoma skin cancer.