Lower overall cancer rates in Hispanic people hide excess hepatocellular, gastric, and cervical cancer, a rising burden in women, and widening gaps in coverage, language, and trust. Research conducted with Hispanic communities, rather than simply about them, is essential.
The clinical landscape of early stage nonsmall cell lung cancer is at transformative crossroads. Driven by the widespread adoption of low-dose computed tomography screening, the frequent detection of ground-glass opacities, and a rising incidence among never-smokers, the diagnostic center of gravity has shifted toward earlier, potentially curable disease. This shift has been accompanied by equally important therapeutic advances, including parenchyma-sparing surgical techniques, minimally invasive platforms enhanced by digital navigation, and the transformative integration of perioperative immunotherapy and targeted agents. Concurrently, noninvasive monitoring approaches, such as liquid biopsy, have emerged as powerful tools to guide precision management. Despite this progress, substantial barriers to achieving a universal cure persist. Clinicians continue to face uncertainty in the management of ground-glass opacities, the anatomy-based TNM staging system fails to capture the biologic heterogeneity of early tumors, and global disparities in access to innovation remain unresolved. To address these challenges, the authors propose a shift toward a risk-adaptive management paradigm that harnesses artificial intelligence-driven analytics and multi-omics profiling to tailor treatment intensity according to each patient's biologic risk. Such an approach would enable appropriate escalation for high-risk individuals while permitting safe de-escalation for those at low risk. This holistic, lifespan-oriented strategy must be embraced to deliver equitable and durable cures for patients with early stage nonsmall cell lung cancer.
The American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging for all cancer sites has been updated periodically as a published manual for many years. The last update of the manual version, the eighth edition AJCC Cancer Staging Manual, went into use on January 1, 2018. The AJCC has since restructured and updated its processes for curating, analyzing, and publishing updates to the TNM staging system. All AJCC staging-related data are now housed on its new application programming interface. Consequently, the subsequent AJCC TNM staging updates are now published electronically as protocols and are released by disease sites. The protocol for carcinoma of the vulva, AJCC version 9, is now published. The new TNM vulvar cancer staging was validated using the American College of Surgeons' National Cancer Data Base. This article highlights the changes to the new AJCC TNM staging protocol for carcinoma of the vulva; these changes align with the 2021 International Federation for Gynecology and Obstetrics staging. The most important of the changes are: (1) a new method for depth of invasion measurement, (2) the addition of a new T subcategory-T4, (3) redefined N subcategories, and (4) an increased number of M subcategories with the addition of clinical to all M subcategories.
