A publication by Drs. Oxnard and colleagues from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center just came out in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that should remind all of us of the pitfalls of taking very small changes in measurements too literally.

A radiologist, the person who specializes in reviewing imaging studies in medicine, is often someone you notice if they're unusually bad or unusually good. They perform a service and you presume that they're good at it, but a few are so sharp that the other doctors they work with notice it at every tumor board discussion or one on one exchange.

In practicing oncology, one of my patients’ (and even more so, the families’) greatest concerns is how long it takes between when the patient was first diagnosed with probable lung cancer and when they can begin treatment. Of course this is a completely natural reaction, and is based on a lot of very real concerns.

This is the first of the presentations by guest speakers at our NSCLC Patient Education Forum back in September. Dr. Gerard Silvestri is a pulmonologist, a lung disease specialist (not only cancer), and he is also one of the most important leaders in lung cancer within the field of pulmonology, as both a writer of some very important work and as a great speaker.