Anti-Emesis For Patients With Gastrointestinal Cancers

At the 2023 World Congress on Gastrointesinal Cancers, Matti Aapro, MD, Genolier Cancer Center, Genolier, Switzerland, gave a keynote address on how to best treat emesis among patients with gastrointestinal cancers. Dr Aapro pointed about the management of nausea and vomiting "is cancer treatment. This is making the life of the patients easier."

Dr Aapro also mentioned the forthcoming update to the MASSC and ESMO guidelines on nausea and vomiting which will provide improvements to the current baseline.  

Transcript:

Hello, I'm Matti Aapro, a medical oncology based in Genolier in Switzerland. I'm here at the 2023 World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancers, where I was invited to give a talk about anti-emetics. This is a topic which was just recently revised by the MASSC/ESMO committee. And unfortunately, ESMO has put an embargo, so I cannot tell you exactly what the committee has suggested, but I can give you a couple of hints.

The first thing is, follow the guidelines. The MASSC/ESMO guidelines are still valid. What is going to come out is going to be a slight, may I say, improvement on what is available. But the baseline is not going to change. And we do have lots of data to show that if you do follow the guidelines, if you apply the guidelines, the outcome for your patient is going to be so much better. The complete control, no nausea, no vomiting, no nothing, is going to increase by an absolute 10%. Who would ever neglect an absolute 10% improvement in cancer treatment? This is cancer treatment. This is making the life of the patients easier. It's so important.

At this Congress, of course, one of the questions you all have is, what about oxaliplatin, which is a drug you use quite frequently, and which is in this mixed bag of 90% risk of nausea and vomiting. There have been publications now to show that the triple association of anti-emetics is useful, at least in certain settings. We shall see if this is in the guidelines. But I'm attracting your attention to the fact that there are publications to show that this is important.

Last word. A question for those that are really following the field, is that we know that the drug called olanzapine can improve on the control of delayed nausea and vomiting. The MASSC/ESMO guidelines until now said, "Maybe use, maybe do not use." We are going to discuss this further, so keep your eyes open. Very soon in ESMO Open, you will have all the details of what I will not be able to share with you, because of the embargo. Thank you very much.

Source:

Aapro M. Toxicity Management: Nausea and Vomiting. Presented at the 2023 World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancers; June 28-July 1, 2023; Barcelona, Spain.