Papers of the Week

Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a serious clinical problem and challenging for oncologists. CIPN is often a persistent adverse consequence of certain chemotherapeutic agents and more cancer survivors will experience CIPN leading to chronic pain and worsening quality of life. However, the available and effective strategies for clinical treatment of CIPN are very limited. Oncologists are frequently obliged to decrease or stop neurotoxic anticancer drugs, with a possible deleterious impact on the oncological prognostic. The challenges faced by CIPN include further study on the pathological mechanism, dose threshold, incidence, risk factors and clinical characteristics of CIPN; lack of diagnostic criteria and tools of CIPN; lack of effective and standardized CIPN prevention and treatment programs. The current update of research results on these challenging issues of CIPN will provide more decision-making evidence for oncologists to diagnose and treat CIPN. Therefore, Committee of Neoplastic Supportive-Care of China Anti-Cancer Association and Cancer Clinical Chemotherapy Committee of China Anti-Cancer Association convenes some experts to summarize the recent literatures and discuss to reach the consensus about recommendations for the definition, pathophysiological mechanism, assessment, prevention, and treatment of CIPN.