Clinical Trial Participation Tied to Improved Breast Cancer Outcomes

['lizbeth]

Hopeful,

I am looking at the numbers and this article is somewhat confusing.

I love the idea of more women participating in a clinical trial. My personal experience was that the follow up is better with a trial, then when I was not in a clinical trial.

I like the idea of additional training for oncology surgery, and making it easier for all surgeons to have access to clinical trials.

I'm not so thrilled about trying to force all women into radiation or chemotherapy. And if they are dreaming about getting an alert when women don't complete chemo - they can be alerted all they want, not every person can tolerate chemo.

How about something more useful for our dollars, like tracking who is recurring?

[Jackie07]

'lizabeth,

The key point of the article/research is that Clinical Trial Participation is tied to improved outcome for breast cancer patients.

1) ... additional oncologic training for surgeons provided a 28% improvement in workup and treatment.

But most significantly, the additional training reduced deaths for stage I-III breast cancer from 39% for stage IIIb disease to 57% for stage I disease, Dr. Dooley said.

2) Another mechanism driving the improved outcomes is that patients treated by a surgical oncologist are far more likely to complete National Comprehensive Cancer Network guideline-compatible therapy in a timely fashion, he said. In all, 77% of stage I-III patients treated by a surgical oncologist completed chemotherapy or hormonal adjuvant therapy, compared with 68.5% of general surgery patients (P less than .02).

True, not everyone tolerate chemo the same way. There are trade-offs. Let's not scare off our fellow cancer fighters - especially the newly diagnosed. They are entitled to factual data and making wise decisions themselves.

My take of the article is that cancer patients are better off under the care of a trained surgical oncologist (instead of general surgeon) not only because of their special training, but because patients are more likely to undergo/follow through with adjuvant therapies such as chemo and radiation.

It's the 21st Century! Let's allow 21st Century thinking to work to our survival advantage.