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Showing 701 - 750Remembering Selma Ruth Schimmel
My last conversation with Selma Schimmel was 2 months ago. She had been uncharacteristically out of touch for a few weeks, and I had a nagging feeling the severe pain in her psoas muscle caused by advancing ovarian cancer—which had plagued her for months and she described as in a “league of its...
Physician Attitudes About Multiplex Tumor Genomic Testing: Variation in Projected Use and Confidence
It is a widely expressed belief that predictive multiplex somatic genomic testing represents the ability to transform cancer care by identifying targetable alterations in multiple cancer genes. Do oncologists share this belief? How do they intend to use such tests in practice? In a study reported...
Research Insights From the AACR Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer
Pancreatic cancer still kills 40,000 Americans a year out of approximately 44,000 diagnosed. While advances in diagnosis and treatment are extending the lives of patients with other cancers, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma remains the second most lethal tumor (behind lung cancer). While a magic...
International Leader in Urology, Professor John Fitzpatrick, Dies
His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, “This was a man!” —William Shakespeare I have too many positive memories of John to regale you with here,” said Roger Kirby, MD, in a tribute to his close friend and colleague, John Michael...
ASCO’s 50th Anniversary: Past Presidents Recall Top Issues During Their Terms
In a series of articles on the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s CancerProgress.Net website, past ASCO presidents are sharing their recollections of the major issues during their terms. Emil J Freireich, MD, FASCO, (1980–1981), remembered that during his presidency, ASCO began the process of...
Dignity, Personhood, and the Culture of Medicine
Cancer patients need more than good health care: they need health caring, according to palliative care specialist Harvey M. Chochinov, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba and Director of the Manitoba Palliative Care Research Unit, CancerCare Manitoba. Health ...
Cancer Survivor and Patient Advocate Michael S. Katz, MBA, Has Helped Alter the Standard of Care for Myeloma Survivors
Michael S. Katz, MBA, has lived longer than any of his doctors thought he would. A two-time cancer survivor, Mr. Katz was diagnosed, first with multiple myeloma in 1990 and then with colorectal cancer in 2008, and has spent the past 2 decades tirelessly advocating for patients with cancer. The...
Taking Charge of Your Care
The first sign I had that something might be wrong was an uncontrollable itch all over my body. Although I had never had anything like that before, the problem was easy to initially dismiss. I’m a respiratory therapist and visit patients in their homes daily, so I chalked up the itchiness to an...
Michael Douglas Shares His Experience With Stage IV Oropharyngeal Cancer
Academy Award winning actor and producer Michael Douglas was the guest of honor at the opening day of the International Federation of Head and Neck Oncologic Societies (IFHNOS) 5th World Congress on July 27 in New York (see page 22 for more on the World Congress). He came not to plug the release of ...
Facing Cancer Together
David sits at his desk, tapping angrily. He’s tired of his abusive, ignorant boss, the VP for regional sales. The man’s sales targets are absurdly high, he’s impossible to reach on the phone, his “motivational” speeches evoke the stress of Glengarry Glen Ross, and even his fake all-light-brown hair ...
More Collaboration Needed Between Oncologists and Primary Care Physicians
One of the most important cancer survivorship issues is the transition from oncologist to the primary care setting. With a growing population of cancer survivors, patients need to feel secure about their primary care provider having the tools to address their special needs. To shed light on this...
Does the United States Have the Best Health-Care System in the World?
Many concerns were raised and dire speculations predicted during the further implementation of the Affordable Care Act this year. So far, the trickling news is good: An estimated total of 20 million people gained coverage under the new law as of May 1,1 about 6 million enrolled in the law’s...
Cancer Has Given Me Courage
In 1986, I was pregnant with my third child and excited to be interviewing for a job on the assembly line at a General Motors plant near my home in Brodhead, Wisconsin. Hiring requirements included a physical examination and a chest x-ray, which was done by my obstetrician to avoid any radiation...
Protocol Modifications Decrease Toxicity, Increase Event-Free Survival in Children With Down Syndrome Treated for ALL
Protocol modifications to address increased risk of toxicity and excess early mortality among children with Down syndrome being treated for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) proved safe for patients with Down syndrome, and these patients had event-free survival similar to those without Down ...
Jury Still Out on Interim PET for Response-Adapted Therapy in Hodgkin Lymphoma
Interim positron-emission tomography (PET) scans provide good prognostic information in patients with Hodgkin lymphoma, but more research is needed to determine whether patients benefit when the findings are used to alter treatment, according to Oliver Press, MD, PhD, Professor at the University of ...
Breast Cancer Has Led Me to Careers in Activism and Filmmaking
The last thing I expected to find when I returned home after a summer vacation celebrating my 50th birthday was a letter from my gynecologist saying the routine mammogram I had before I left found suspicious-looking calcifications in my right breast and that I should see a surgeon right away. Being ...
ASTRO Honors Jasan Zimmerman With 2014 Survivor Circle Award
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) presented the 2014 Survivor Circle Award to San Francisco Bay Area resident and cancer survivor Jasan Zimmerman during ASTRO’s 56th Annual Meeting held recently in San Francisco. The Survivor Circle Award recognizes a cancer survivor who lives in...
Cancer Frontier: Bringing the New Sciences to an Old School
Cancer seems to have an endless supply of people who want to write about it. Why not? It’s an intriguing subject of life and death and struggle and hope, one that touches virtually every person of a certain age. However, the bookshelves are filled with cancer survivorship books, so to stand out, an ...
Immunotherapy Research of James P. Allison, PhD, Has Led to a Paradigm Shift in the Treatment of Cancer
James P. Allison, PhD, has been bucking the status quo since he was a teenager growing up in the small agricultural town of Alice, Texas, in the 1950s and 1960s. He first butted heads with authority figures when he was in high school and learned that his biology class had omitted the teaching of...
National Cancer Institute Launches the National Clinical Trials Network to Expedite Scientific Advances
In March, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) transformed its Cooperative Group Program into the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN). Spurred by recommendations in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) 2010 report, A National Cancer Clinical Trials System for the 21st Century: Reinvigorating the NCI...
Social Media Is Helping Me Cope With Cancer
Despite a diagnosis in August 2013 of stage III high-grade spindle cell sarcoma and subsequent disease recurrence, I’m mindful of how fortunate I am that my cancer was found before widespread metastases could take hold, making treatment futile. It was just happenstance, 2 months before, on a long...
Fear
The following essay by Michael Feinstein, MD, is excerpted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was co-edited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org....
Breaking the Silence About Breast Cancer in the Arab World
In 1974, First Lady Betty Ford spoke publicly about her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Remarkably, at the time of her action, public discussion of breast cancer in the United States was seen as off limits. Four decades later, cultural barriers to women’s health still exist, particularly in...
Cancer Survivors Face Lasting Financial Struggles Long After Treatment Ends, New Study Reports
The majority (62%) of America’s middle-income cancer survivors say they were not financially prepared for cancer diagnosis and treatment, according to a new study released by the Washington National Institute for Wellness Solutions (IWS). The study, “Insights from Survivors: Managing the Personal,...
Despite Growing Awareness, the Global Crisis of Untreated Cancer Pain Persists
Each day, millions of patients with cancer around the world suffer unrelieved pain because they are denied morphine, the gold standard of cancer pain control. The World Health Organization has called access to morphine a human rights issue. Not surprisingly, the crisis in unrelieved cancer pain is...
Pathologic Complete Response: Understanding the Subtleties
In the neoadjuvant treatment of breast cancer, the importance of achieving a pathologic complete response (pCR) varies substantially by breast cancer subtype. Patients are increasingly interested in this outcome, but it means different things to different patients, according to two breast cancer...
A Candidly Humorous Approach to the Cancer Journey
BOOKMARK Title: Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor That Tried to Kill MeAuthor: Bryan BishopPublisher: Thomas Dunne BooksPublication date: April 29, 2014Price: $25.99; hardcover, 336 pages At 30 years old, Bryan Bishop was having the time of his life. Known to millions of radio fans as...
David G. Nathan, MD, Wins Lifetime Impact Award at Boston Children’s Hospital Innovation Summit
David G. Nathan, MD, President Emeritus of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Physician-in-Chief Emeritus of Boston Children’s Hospital, was recently honored as the inaugural recipient of the Boston Children’s Hospital Lifetime Impact Award at the Hospital’s second Annual Global Pediatric Innovation...
Expert Point of View: Axel Grothey, MD
Putting the maintenance trials into context was Axel Grothey, MD, Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, who commented, “These studies inform our clinical practice and have a meaningful impact on how we treat our patients.” DREAM Trial In the DREAM Trial, Dr. Grothey...
Young Adults With Cancer: Unique Issues Highlight Importance of Patient-Centered Care
Suleika Jaouad, a journalist, was 22 and had just gotten her first chance to cover a major news story—the revolution underway in Tunisia—when she was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome that had evolved into acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Months into her treatment, she began to write again, but...
A Good Life, All the Way to the Very End
BOOKMARKTitle: Being MortalAuthor: Atul Gawande, MDPublisher: Metropolitan BooksPublication date: October 7, 2014Price: $26.00; hardcover, 304 pages Mortality is the invisible observer in the oncology exam room. When people hear the three words, “You have cancer,” they see their world as they...
CancerLinQ: Building a Data Infrastructure to Improve Quality and Reduce Cost
In November 2013, ASCO initiated the development of CancerLinQ, a learning health system designed to transform cancer care and improve outcomes. At this year’s Quality Care Symposium in Boston, ASCO President Peter Paul Yu, MD, FACP, FASCO, Director of Cancer Research at the Palo Alto Medical...
Appetite-Enhancing Agent Helps Patients Treated for NSCLC Gain Weight and Lean Body Mass and Feel Better
People have an image of stage III or IV lung cancer patients getting chemotherapy or chemoradiation, and they look terrible; they are losing weight. The fact is, when they respond, they can gain weight,” according to Philip Bonomi, MD, MS. He is the lead author of a phase III study showing that the ...
Conquer Cancer Foundation and Michael’s Mission Work Together to Conquer Colorectal Cancer
"Nobody tells a 28 year old to get a colonoscopy.” It’s the sad but true reality that many young adults may be at risk for colorectal cancer. Unfortunately, many people, young adults in particular, are not aware of the risk factors and do not get screened early enough to catch the disease when it...
Lung Cancer: Next Frontier for Immunotherapy
Immune checkpoint inhibitors, particularly PD-1 (programmed cell death-1) and PD-L1 (programmed death-ligand 1) inhibitors, are being studied extensively in lung cancer. These agents, alone and in combination, appear to have the potential to change the management of non–small cell lung cancer...
The Long and Winding Road to Modern Integrative Oncology
It has been a long road from the blind acceptance of unproven “alternative” remedies for the treatment of cancer to the development of rigorous guidelines for integrative care, which address symptom control. The recently released Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) guidelines applicable to...
What It Means to Be Mortal
“I learned a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them,” writes Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, in his new book on the medicalization of aging and dying, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Metropolitan Books, 2014). In the book, Dr. Gawande critiques the American...
Panelists Lambast, Explore the High Cost of Cancer Drugs
At the 2014 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting, a symposium on the high cost of cancer drugs proved provocative and a bit testy as panelists presented their various points of view. ‘Medical Darwinian System’ Already known for his outspoken views on the topic is Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD,...
Top 10 Lessons Learned So Far About Treating Lung Cancer With Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy agents “really work” in treating lung cancer, but they have unique toxicities, are challenging to combine with other therapies, and questions remain about dose and duration, Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, stated at the 2014 Chicago Multidisciplinary Symposium in Thoracic Oncology. “There are ...
BOLERO-1: Everolimus Plus Trastuzumab/Paclitaxel Misses the Mark in First‑Line HER2-Positive Advanced Breast Cancer
The addition of everolimus (Afinitor) to weekly trastuzumab (Herceptin) plus paclitaxel in the first-line metastatic breast cancer setting did not improve outcomes in the phase III BOLERO-1/TRIO-019 but did provide a “signal” in the hormone receptor–negative subset. The study was reported at the...
Twenty Years After a Diagnosis … and Counting
In 1995, I was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer and given little chance to live. The dire diagnosis came years after being assured by several physicians that the problem I was having with rectal bleeding and anemia was nothing more than the result of an internal hemorrhoid. Busy raising...
ASCO President on ABIM Decision
Peter Paul Yu, MD, FACP, FASCO, ASCO President, made the following remarks following ABIM’s recent announcement concerning maintenance of certification: “Last year, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) released a new process for maintenance of certification (MOC) that many physicians felt ...
Addressing the Global Cancer Burden
Since 1990, the annual global death toll from cancer has risen about 40%, and that number is projected to increase from the current level of approximately 8 million cancer deaths per year to more than 13 million by 2030. The poorer, resource-challenged regions of the world will suffer a...
Technology’s Double-Edged Sword: One Woman’s Story
Bookmark Title: Pandora’s DNA: Tracing the Breast Cancer Genes Through History, Science, and One Family TreeAuthor: Lizzie StarkPublisher: Chicago Review PressPublication date: October 2014Price: $26.95; hardcover, 336 pages If we wish to learn more about cancer, we must concentrate on the cellular ...
Staff Support Sessions in an Oncology Setting
Work-related issues such as coping skills, stress management, burnout, and compassion fatigue are among the challenges faced by clinical and other staff in cancer treatment centers. Given the emotional consequences of professional caregiving, staff support group meetings are valuable resources for...
Cancer Has Left an Indelible Mark on Me
Even though today I’m cancer-free, the experience of getting a cancer diagnosis and going through treatment leaves an indelible mark on your psyche—as well as your body—that time doesn’t erase. Once you have cancer, you become a cancer survivor, and that status doesn’t change. I’ve known many...
Maryland Oncologists Faced With Navigating the Maze of Chemotherapy Safety Regulations
In March 2013, 60 Minutes aired a devastating piece about a Massachusetts compounding center that shipped an injectable steroid contaminated with fungus. One of the many ripple effects from this story of horrendous patient suffering was felt in Maryland, where it sparked legislative action in the...
Andrew Parsa, MD, PhD, Chair of Neurological Surgery at Northwestern, Dies at 48
Andrew Parsa, MD, PhD, the Michael J. Marchese Professor and Chair of the Departments of Neurological Surgery at Feinberg and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, passed away on April 13. He was 48 years old. “We are all shocked and saddened by this great loss. Dr. Parsa was a distinguished scholar, an...
Remembering Multiple Myeloma Patient Advocate Michael S. Katz, MBA
I first met Michael Katz, MBA, in 2004, 3 years after my brother, Dom, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and we were at a crossroads in his care and needed advice. Although an experimental regimen of thalidomide (Thalomid) and dexamethasone had successfully put Dom in remission for a year (the...
The Paradox of Positive Thinking
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
