Five Key Issues For The Future Of Cancer IT
If there’s one thing that’s become clear about precision medicine – and the delivery of optimal care based in science – it will require super technology. This need is especially urgent in oncology.
writer, health care advocate, physician
If there’s one thing that’s become clear about precision medicine – and the delivery of optimal care based in science – it will require super technology. This need is especially urgent in oncology.
DCIS accounts for approximately 1 in 5 breast cancer-ish diagnoses in the United States. The practical problem with DCIS is that most oncologists, surgical and medical, will admit they’re not sure what to do about it.
On Twitter this week, I happened upon a discussion having to do with the possibility of curing cancer.
If overtreatment is the problem, the solution is not by avoidance of breast cancer detection, but by better education of physicians and patients.
Researchers today are analyzing our grandmothers’ mammograms to inform women’s health and screening decisions today.
Radiologists who publish academic papers on breast imaging may be influenced by idiosyncrasies in training, what machines their practices own or hospitals happen to have purchased, anecdotal experiences and personal skills.
Women have every right to know if they have dense breasts and if they’re at increased risk for a hidden tumor.
Many patients living with metastatic breast cancer need more help than they’re receiving, and many are reluctant to ask.
Is it possible to apply the principle of informed consent when giving experimental drugs during a rapid and devastating epidemic?
Chemotherapy treatments for early-stage breast cancer vary widely in their possible side effects. But few newly-diagnosed patients press their oncologists about those differences.
Last week, a panel convened by the FDA deliberated over the risks and benefits of using power morcellators in gynecological surgery. In April, the agency issued an alert cautioning providers that the tools could spread malignant cells from an occult malignancy.
This kind of paternalism, when a doctor assesses the risks and benefits, and spares the patient’s “knowing” seems anachronistic. But it may, still, be what many people are looking for when and if they get a serious illness.