Weekly cisplatin with postoperative radiotherapy held up against 3-weekly dosing at five years

The edition in brief

The Japanese JCOG1008 trial randomised 261 patients with high-risk resected locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma to postoperative chemoradiotherapy with cisplatin 100 mg/m² every three weeks or 40 mg/m² weekly. At a median 5.6 years, five-year overall survival was 58.7% with 3-weekly and 71.2% with weekly cisplatin (HR 0.76, 95% CI 0.52–1.12), confirming non-inferiority, with no major difference in late toxicity. In a quadruple-blind trial of 209 children after adenotonsillectomy, oral dexamethasone on days 2, 4 and 6 gave a modest, imprecise reduction in pain, lower odds of an opioid prescription (OR 0.23) and fewer emergency visits for pain, without more bleeding. A meta-analysis of eight studies (192 infants) of valganciclovir or ganciclovir started after the first month for congenital CMV reported hearing normalising in about 42% of affected ears, but without control groups and with very high heterogeneity. In 515 US adult cochlear implant recipients, greater neighbourhood deprivation was linked to worse hearing at assessment but not to worse benefit after implantation. The pearl covers testing for congenital CMV in newborns who fail hearing screening.