Introduction: Pregnancy Associated Breast cancer (PABC) is associated with poor prognosis and a decreased overall survival. A retrospective review was conducted to review the experience and outcome in a tertiary care hospital, and to compare those seen in a matched group for year of diagnosis. Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective review of a prospectively collected breast cancer registry. The study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from January to Decamber 2014 . Female patients with PABC were identified and matched with similar cohort of non-pregnant breast cancer patients that were diagnosed between 2001-2010. Clinical data including age, tumor biology, clinical stage, follow up and outcomes (disease free survival, DFS) were analyzed and compared between the two groups using SAS 9.3 and R-2.14.1 Results: A total of 110 patients in Group 1 and 114 patients in Group II were analyzed. In both groups, the patient age ranged was between 20 to 45 years; the median follow up was 34 months in PABC and 54 months in non-pregnant cohort. PABC were statistically more likely to be triple negative (p value-0.05) and diagnosed at advanced stage (stage 3 and 4) (p value-0.02). There was no difference in the occurrence of Her-2 positive disease. In pregnant patients there was a 5-year survival rate of 65% compared to non-pregnant cohort of 82% with p value of 0.002 and DFS was also 47.5% versus 65.4% with a p value .002 which is statistically significant. Conclusion: Pregnancy associated breast cancer (PABC) is diagnosed at a more advanced stage and tends to be triple negative and they are associated with a worse DFS and overall survival. Early detection during pregnancy may improve outcome.

Introduction: Febrile neutropenia is a relatively frequent event in cancer patients treated with chemotherapy and improvement in absolute neutrophil count (ANC) has been linked directly to improved outcome. Evaluation of granulocyte colony stimulating factors (GCSFs) for treatment has shown reduced incidences of episodes of prolonged neutropenia and protracted hospitalization. To determine absolute neutrophil counts with GCSF in febrile neutropenic cancer patients admitted to a tertiary care centre and to co-relate the improvement in ANC with mortality and hospital discharge. Methods: A prospective cross sectional study was carried at an oncology ward at Aga Khan University hospital from January 2010 to June 2011. All adult patients who were admitted and treated with GCSF for chemotherapy induced febrile neutropenia were included. Multivariable regression was conducted to identify the factors related with poor outcomes. Results: A total of 131 patients with febrile neutropenia were identified with mean age of 43.2 (18-85) years, 79 (60%) being ≤50. Seventy-five (57%) had solid tumors and 56 (43%) hematological malignancies, including lymphoma. Fifty seven (43.5%) had an ANC less 100 cells/mm 3 , 34 (26%) one between100-300 cells/mm 3 and 40 (31%) an ANC greater than 300 cells/mm 3 . Thirty (23%) patients showed ANC recovery in 1-3 days, and 74(56%) within 4-7 days. Thirteen (10%) patients showed no recovery. The overall mortality was 18 (13.7%) patients. The mean time for ANC recovery seen in hematological malignancies was 6.34 days whereas for solid tumors it was 4.88 days. Patients with ANC <100 cells/mm 3 were more likely to die than patients with ANC >300 cells/mm 3 by a factor of 4.3. Similarly patients >50 years of age were 2.7 times more likely to die than younger patients. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that use of GCSF, in addition to intravenous antibiotics, in treatment of patients with chemotherapy induced febrile neutropenia accelerates neutrophil recovery, and shortens antibiotic therapy and hospitalization. We propose to risk classify the patients at the time of admission to evaluate the cost effectiveness of this approach in a resource constrained setup.

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Background Nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma (NLPHL) is an uncommon subtype of Hodgkin lymphoma. Data are limited regarding 18F-labelled fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (FDG)-PET use in NLPHL. We are reporting our experience with FDG-PET utility in staging and response assessment NLPHL patients. Methods We retrospectively studied a population of all newly diagnosed or relapsed/refractory patients who underwent both pre-treatment contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CeCT) and an FDG-PET and also at the end of planned treatment. Results We identified 68 patients found to have in total 312 scans, 78 paired pre-therapeutic and post-treatment CeCT and FDG-PET scans. Among them, 55 were male, with a median follow-up was 48 months. Median SUV-max was 8.3 (2.0–21.0). FDG-PET and CeCT were concordant in 80% (62/78) of staging scans. In 20% (16/78) of patients in whom a discordance was observed, FDG-PET resulted in upstaging in 13 scans and downstaging in 3 scans. The sensitivity of CeCT was 92% for nodal staging and 42% for extralymphatic staging when compared to FDG-PET. The specificity of CeCT was 98% as compared to FDG-PET. For response assessment, there was poor agreement between the CeCT and FDG-PET in assigning complete remission of disease scores as FDG-PET was able to identify the absence of disease despite the presence of a radiologically evident residual mass on CeCT. The sensitivity for CeCT compared to FDG-PET was 100% while the specificity was 43% for detection of post-treatment response. Conclusion For NLPHL, pre-therapeutic FDG-PET scan is better than CeCT staging. FDG-PET has much better specificity for response assessment than CeCT.