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Most of what I write about here highlights the evidence supporting treatments, and that’s certainly how we strive to practice oncology. But the reality is that patients and doctors often find themselves in the middle of settings where we don’t have any answers and need to rely on judgment, or we think we can potentially [...]
3 CommentsToday’s NY Times included a high profile article about the difficult balance between the clinical value of some expensive cancer therapies and their financial value. I think it did a fair job of portraying both sides of the issue — that therapies like avastin, erbitux, and others are certainly priced aggressively [...]
14 CommentsThe National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) is the oldest survivor-led advocacy group, and they recently released some highlights of their study on perceptions of chemotherapy vs. the experience of patients who actually underwent chemotherapy for a cancer in the last few years. Because several membes have raised questions of whether [...]
12 CommentsThis doesn’t directly relate to lung cancer, but in a prior post I described a trial of the vitamin D analog calcitriol (Asentar) with taxotere for treating advanced NSCLC. Although it has been very unclear whether there might be any future for this agent in lung cancer, I and many others were [...]
2 CommentsAlthough I’ve been practicing oncology for several years, there’s no question that my work in the online space with so many patients and family members has been a different kind of experience, one that has shaped my perspective of how I interact with patients in my own clinic now. More and [...]
5 CommentsMedicine in general has become increasingly evidence-based, which we think is a good thing. Rather than have doctors use a wide range of approaches to the work-up and treatment of many problems, there are a growing number of guidelines that shape our “standards of care”, the defined best treatment practices. [...]
1 CommentsIn oncology, we very frequently hear people say, “I don’t know how you do what you do”. There are plenty of times when we might start to wonder ourselves, as we fight with insurers to get a treatment, or when very bad things happen to patients we’ve developed relationships with. [...]
9 CommentsMember Ned raised the question of how oncologists discuss prognosis and the goals of treatment. I think this is a very important topic that touches every relationship between an oncologist and the patient (and family and/or friends directly involved). First, I’ll say that this is an area of medicine that [...]
22 CommentsThe American Cancer Society has just recommended that breast MRIs be performed in addition to mammograms in women who are estimated to have a lifetime risk of developing breast cancer of 25%, primarily those women with a signfiicant family history of breast cancer. The evidence on breast MRI indicates that this technique [...]
16 CommentsLast year, one of the issues I was struck by in reading the comments on a few patient-oriented websites when I really began in earnest to participate in the online sites was the tension that can occur all too often between patients and oncologists. There are certainly many potential pitfalls, but one [...]
4 Comments
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