“Social” Medicine Can Lead to Inadequate Cancer Care

In the past week, national figures Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow have brought much needed focus on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The challenge is to overcome patient fear and encourage qualified second opinions.

“Patients often confront the phenomenon of ‘social medicine’,” said Dr. Robert Nagourney, founder of Rational Therapeutics and medical director of the Malcolm C. Todd Cancer Institute at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. Social medicine occurs when the patient, usually of high economic or social strata, is referred to the doctor or medical center that fits their social stratum. All of the nice people are seen by Doctor X. Unfortunately, that doctor’s unique qualification may be more related to his country club rather than his particular expertise. “It isn’t only socioeconomic,” Dr. Nagourney continued, “but also the magical thinking attached to the larger medical centers.”

Once the patient perceives that they are at the best center, second opinions are frequently dismissed out of hand. Regrettably, good outcomes don’t occur by chance or by virtue of a patient’s social stratum. Instead they reflect the matching of patients to those therapies with the highest likelihood of benefit. Regardless of a cancer center’s reputation, the process of drug selection of chemotherapy is usually confined to “off the shelf” treatments that do not incorporate each patient’s unique biological makeup.

At one time in their treatment, cancer patients Dr. Elizabeth Panke and Kathy Leach were told that there was no hope for survival. Like Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow, they had very serious cancers that had metastasized, Leach with stage-4 breast cancer to the liver, and Dr. Panke with platinum refractory ovarian cancer, both considered a death sentence.

In desperation, both women turned to Rational Therapeutics and personalized chemotherapy. Dr. Nagourney harvested a sample of their specific tumor and exposed it to a panel of varying chemotherapeutic agents in the laboratory. This enabled Dr. Nagourney to identify the drug most likely to fight their cancer. This is very different from standard “off the shelf” treatments that use a “shotgun” approach to treat cancer patients. The chemotherapy that most effectively killed their cancers in the laboratory was exactly the chemotherapy that each patient received. These treatments worked for Kathy Leach, a four-year survivor, and Dr. Panke, an eight-year survivor.

“Within weeks of starting my individualized chemotherapy regimen, my cancer was gone. It was a miracle", said Panke.

source:www.huliq.com