Over the past 40 years, largely because of universal Pap screening, cervical cancer deaths have been drastically reduced in the United States and other wealthy industrialized countries. However, cervical cancer is still a leading cause of cancer death among women in resource-challenged areas of the ...
Title: Lighter as We Go: Virtues, Character Strengths, and AgingAuthors: Mindy Greenstein, PhD, and Jimmie Holland, MDPublisher: Oxford University Press Publication date: September 2014Price: $27.95; Hardcover, 320 pages Death is the universal experience shared by Earth’s 7 billion or so...
Significant weight loss, cachexia, and being bedbound signal that a cancer patient is dying. However, identifying the specific signs that give physicians the ability to predict death is not well described in the literature. To better understand why predicting death is an important part of the care...
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 ...
In Rwanda, there is basically no chemotherapy available through government purchasing. The Partners in Health/Dana-Farber partnership supplies all the standard-of-care chemotherapy regimens for the cancer patients at the Butaro Cancer Center of Excellence, explained Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, Chief...
In eealthy industrialized nations like the United States, escalating costs of cancer care have put the term “cost-effective care” on the forefront of health-care policy discussions. However, the cost issues we wrestle with in our $3 trillion health-care system are vague abstractions for much of the ...
Persons whose illnesses are related to exposure to the World Trade Center disaster may be eligible for medical services or monetary compensation under two Federal programs. The World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program provides medical monitoring and treatment for responders at the World Trade...
On September 11, 2001, the devastating terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center left in its wake a unique toxic site in both mass and quantity of hazardous materials. It took 9 months to remove approximately 2 million tons of wreckage from Ground Zero, during which thousands of...
Bookmark Title: Integrative Oncology (Second Edition)Editors: Donald I. Abrams, MD, and Andrew T. Weil, MDPublisher: Oxford University PressPublication date: September 3, 2014Price: $65.00; Paperback, 848 pages In 1990, David Eisenberg, MD, from the Harvard School of Public Health, conducted a...
This date has a special place in my heart, as well as the hearts of my children, my family and my loved ones. It was the day when my life—and my priorities—took a whole new direction.” So begins Breast Cancer, Break the Silence, a slim yet powerful and highly revealing booklet by Saudi Arabian...
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...
In 2014, about 15,000 people in the United States will be diagnosed with some form of sarcoma, and of those, approximately 5,000 adults and children are expected to die of the disease. Sarcomas are a heterogeneous group of mesenchymal malignancies that have historically been difficult to diagnose...
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...
BOOKMARK Title: Therapeutic Revolution: The History of Medical Oncology From Early Days to the Creation of the SubspecialtyAuthor: Pierre R. BandPublisher: Bentham SciencePublication date: 2014Price: $39.00 (eBook); $78.00 (print on demand); 213 pagesAvailable at: eurekaselect.com According to...
Testicular cancer is one of oncology’s true success stories. It is a highly treatable disease, usually curable, that most often develops in young and middle-aged men. Despite the success in testicular cancer, there are still clinical challenges ranging from staging to optimum therapeutic...
Recent articles on developments and controversies in the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia include the following features from The ASCO Post, which are also available at www.ascopost.com: “Recent FDA Approvals Foster Growing Treatment Armamentarium for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Rare ...
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...
BOOKMARK Title: The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical EthicsAuthor: Barron H. Lerner, MDPublisher: Beacon PressPublication date: May 13, 2014Price: $25.95; hardcover, 240 pages One morning in 1996, an infectious disease specialist was making rounds when he and his team...
Stand Up To Cancer is a groundbreaking initiative created to accelerate innovative cancer research that will rapidly bring new therapies to patients. In 2014, Margaret A. Tempro, MD, was selected to join a multidisciplinary Stand Up To Cancer “dream team” of pancreatic cancer researchers from nine...
Adenocarcinoma of the pancreas is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in men and women in the United States. This year, about 46,000 people in this country will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and more than 39,000 will die of the disease. The ASCO Post recently spoke with Margaret A....
Over the past decade, there has been growing concern in the oncology community about overdiagnosis and overtreatment of cancers that prove to be indolent and nonlethal, resulting in unnecessary and sometimes harmful procedures. At this year’s ASCO Quality Care Symposium in Boston, this important...
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...
While primary malignant brain tumors account for only 2% of all adult cancers, these deadly neoplasms cause severe cancer-related disability; the 5-year survival rates for brain tumors rank third lowest among all cancers, with those for pancreas and lung cancers being first and second lowest,...
The Harvard Global Equity Initiative is a research program at Harvard University that is dedicated to promoting equitable global development, with a strong emphasis on health-care issues. This initiative brings together scholars, policymakers, advocates, and practitioners from around the world to...
Unplanned cancer care—emergency department presentations and other unanticipated events—can result in poor outcomes that are potentially preventable. Suzanne Tamang, PhD, Stanford University, Stanford, California, addressed this important issue in her presentation at this year’s Quality Care...
At this year’s Quality Care Symposium, Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, Chief of Staff and Director of the Center for Global Cancer Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, looked at the issue of quality infrastructure development through the prism of several tools developed by the American...
Evidence indicates that the use of surgical safety checklists results in marked improvements in patient outcomes. Unfortunately, their adoption in the field of medicine has largely been limited to equipment operations or parts of specific treatment algorithms. Yet they have tremendous potential to...
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...
Bookmark Title: Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner Authors: Judy Melinek, MD, and T.J. Mitchell Publisher: Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc Publication Date: August 2014 Price: $25.00; hardcover, 272 pages Just as the sun came up over a...
Bookmark Title: Internal Medicine: A Doctor’s Stories Author: Terrence Holt, MD Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation Publication Date: September 2014 Price: $24.95; hardcover, 288 pages “This book is the story of a residency in internal medicine. I wrote it over a period of 10 years,...
In the first quarter of 2015, the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) will become a member-based organization. Member organizations will have unlimited access to CAPC tools, training, and hands-on technical assistance. At that time, CAPC will launch the first of its online curricula, broken...
Palliative care expert Diane E. Meier, MD, is the Director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC), a national organization devoted to enhancing the number and quality of palliative care programs across the nation. Under her leadership, the number of palliative care programs in the United...
In a long-awaited decision, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a preliminary proposal to cover annual lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography for appropriate beneficiaries following counseling and a shared–decision-making visit with a qualified...
The process of identifying a promising molecule and moving it from the laboratory through the highly complex series of clinical trials necessary to garner U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval is a costly scientific gauntlet during which many new agents fail. New trial design,...
Despite advances in detection and treatment, colorectal cancer remains the third deadliest cancer among men and women in the United States. To get a better understanding of the current state of this disease and what lies ahead, The ASCO Post recently spoke with colorectal cancer expert John L....
Forum participants agreed that: Defining quality in cancer care is challenging. Each stakeholder group—practitioners, payers, patients—has its own definition of quality. Given the growing number of accrediting/quality improvement organizations/standards and reporting requirements, some...
In an oncology health-care system that is increasingly changing its delivery and payment models, how do busy oncologists successfully bridge the transition from a volume- to value-based, patient-centric model? This, and other topics on value fueled a robust discussion at the Association of...
Treatment of advanced bladder cancer continues to prove challenging, and therapies that offer long-term survival remain elusive. The ASCO Post recently spoke with Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, FASCO, President of the Levine Cancer Center, Charlotte, North Carolina, about the current state...
Few issues in health-care debates are more contentious and polarizing than population screening for the early detection of cancer. After a decades-long battle, lung cancer screening advocates have just received what they have long sought: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has...
One of the early giants in the field of cancer prevention, Lee W. Wattenberg, MD, died on December 9, 2014, at the age of 92. A native New Yorker, Dr. Wattenberg received his BS from City College of New York in 1941 and then went on to attain his medical degree from the University of Minnesota...
Due in part to the refinement of bone marrow transplantation and its many innovations, some leukemias that once were death sentences now have cure rates of up to 90%. As research in transplantation and other promising areas accelerates, we are on the verge of breaking new clinical boundaries in...
Each year in the United States, about 55,000 people will be diagnosed with head and neck cancer, and of them, about 12,000 will die of the disease. Although advances have been made in the treatment of head and neck cancer, this disease remains persistently problematic, due, in part, to the complex...
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...
Bookmark Title: Then Came Life: Living With Courage, Spirit, and Gratitude After Breast CancerAuthor: Geralyn LucasPublisher: Gotham BooksPublication date: October 2, 2014Price: $19.89; hardcover, 240 pages Over the past decade or so, the oncology community has increased its understanding and...
BookmarkTitle: The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your HandsAuthor: Eric Topol, MDPublisher: Basic BooksPublication date: January 2015Price: $28.99; hardcover, 384 pagesMost books about health care center on fixing broken parts of the massive $3 trillion system, as seen with ...
Disparities of care that result in poorer outcomes among certain populations have long been an issue addressed by the cancer community and its major organizations such as ASCO. While ethnicity and race play key roles in this ongoing debate over equitable allocation of our precious health-care...
Managing older-aged cancer patients represents one of the major challenges to our health-care system. Caring for older cancer patients, with their frequent multiple morbidities and a variable health status, requires special integration of an oncologic and geriatric approach. Moreover, our aging...
BookmarkTitle: The Cost of Cutting: A Surgeon Reveals the Truth Behind a Multibillion-Dollar IndustryAuthor: Paul A. Ruggieri, MDPublisher: Berkley BooksPublication date: September 2014Price: $16.00; paperback, 320 pages The woman seated on the exam table was lean and fit and seemed perfectly at...
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 ...
In 1913, 10 doctors and 5 laypersons in New York founded the American Cancer Society (ACS). At that time, a cancer diagnosis was almost always fatal and was rarely discussed in public. The Society’s original charter was to raise awareness about cancer, and although that mission has remained firm,...