New cancer guidelines for patients -- a useful tool or TMI?
Finding out you have cancer is never fun. But having to sort through information about the disease, possible treatments and the repercussions of each can seriously compound the nightmare.
To ease that process, National Comprehensive Cancer Network on Thursday released the first two of a series of guides for patients dealing with cancer. These are meant to be user-friendly versions of the network’s cancer guidelines for clinicians.
The guides, one for breast cancer and one for lung cancer, go through several topics, among them: how to deal with cancers caught at different stages; chemotherapy; recurrent cancer; and what constitutes follow-up.
But the jury is out on how helpful they are, according to an article from Medscape Medical News:
“It is pretty technical for most patients and I would probably only use it for the most inquisitive of my bunch,” said Rebecca Kaltman, MD, from the George Washington Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
And, the article continues,
Despite all of their technical detail, the patient guidelines overlook some basic patient concerns, said Quyen Chu, MD, from the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center in Shreveport, Louisiana. “Most patients will want to know what type of breast cancer they have; are they going to die from it; are they going to lose their breast; do they have to take chemotherapy; are they going to lose their hair; and who’s going to pay for everything. Very pragmatic everyday questions,” he said. “I can’t recall a single patient who asked me about the molecular studies of her tumor.”
Fine. Fair enough. But there seems to be some good “basic” information in the breast cancer guidelines, such as a list of questions to ask your doctor and what the key parts of a pathology report are.
So who’s right? Ultimately, it probably depends on the patient. So check the guidelines out, and decide for yourself.
-- Amina Khan / Los Angeles Times
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