Cancer drugs in pharm

[grunermann]

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I have my exam coming up in about a week, and you would think that after making it through everything else, I could just suck it up and learn these, but when I start to look at them, I just get this feeling like I can't/won't/shouldn't have to do this. I'm sure others have similar experiences with other things (I bet we'd get a lot of votes for biochem and embryo). But, does anyone have any suggestions/pneumonics that would help my studying? Like probably most people posting here, I'm well past the point of going.

 

[rotatores]

Dr. Barone (Kaplan's intense prep) recommended just studying the MOA/Side affects/phase of Cell cycle. He said not to worry about what cancers are treated with which drug. There really isn't that many...just sit down for about 15 minutes and cram them in.

good luck

 

[rugtrousers]

I had very few (1? 2?) questions on cancer pharmacology when I took the boards in late May. I would say that you should be able to recognize the drugs, put them in classes, and know the major unusual side effects - they almost all cause bone marrow suppression and alopecia, but only a few cause cardiotoxicity, pulmonary fibrosis, and hemorrhagic cystitis.

Good luck! 🙂

 

[Scooby Doo]

I had quite a few cancer drugs on mine that I took today...
U had to know the difference between them..and know their toxicities..seemed like every other patient of mine was being treated with a friggin drug with certain toxicities!..maybe 6-7 questions on cancer pharm on mine

 

[NERDY]

I know this thread is very old. I haven't seen any practice questions where they ask for x cancer, give y drug. Anyone have an opinion? I know MOA, side effects, cell cycle, etc are all fair game but what about actually choosing a drug for a certain type of cancer.

 

[hyrule]

Pharm on the real deal in general is very easy if you know the "general" MOA and side Fx. For cancer drugs, it's pretty easy... most of them result in myelosuppression. So, know the exceptions/weird ones. It's really straight forward.

You don't need to know their applications (ex: using Drug X for colon cancer vs. Drug Y for lung or whatever).. there's just too much overlap. Pharm is easy points on the test so no need to stress.

Something else I remembered, knowing CLEan TAG is not enough for antibiotics. You've gotta know specific MOA.

 

[dude1344]

Something else I remembered, knowing CLEan TAG is not enough for antibiotics. You've gotta know specific MOA.

Like tetracyclines inhibit t-RNA binding and aminoglycosides inhibit ribosome initiation stuff like that?

 

[justdoit31]

I know this thread is very old. I haven't seen any practice questions where they ask for x cancer, give y drug. Anyone have an opinion? I know MOA, side effects, cell cycle, etc are all fair game but what about actually choosing a drug for a certain type of cancer.

DIT said only to worry about the ones that treat testicular cancer since that is popular- Eradicate Ball Cancer- Etoposide, Bleomycin, Cisplatin

Also know that Dactinomycin is mainly used for childhood tumors.

After that just worry about MOA, side effects, etc. Personally I would love a test heavy with onc pharm as I want to go into peds hem/onc and so these drugs are all pretty familiar to me- its the psych stuff that makes my head spin!