During my interview with Jeff Michaels on the March 28, 5:00 P.M. Fox News, we explored the themes of my current book, Outliving Cancer.
One of the points that most interested my interviewer was the appropriate use of our laboratory platform for the selection of therapy.
He asked, “Are there some patients for whom there is no cure?”
I responded by explaining what it is, that our laboratory test is designed to do: “Cure the curable, treat the treatable, and avoid futile care.” Jeff Michaels stopped me and asked that I might repeat what I had just said.
It seemed that my succinct description resonated.
However simple this distillation of our work may seem, I realized it was actually rather profound.
After all, we are confronting an escalating crisis in medicine. How do we meet the needs of a growing population of cancer patients with shrinking resources? How do we allocate treatments to those most likely to respond and finally, how do we avoid the misadventures of toxic and ineffective therapies for those destined to fail chemotherapeutic intervention?
On every level, laboratory models can assist us.
For those patients with early stage breast cancer, ovarian cancer, small cell lung cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and many leukemias, the expectation of a cure is well within our reach. These patients must receive the very best treatments from the start.
The larger population of patients we confront are those with diseases like gastric, colon, non-small cell lung, recurrent breast, recurrent ovarian or sarcoma for whom cures are less likely and effective therapies must be tolerable so that they can provide benefit without undue toxicity. These are the patients for whom cancer can become a “chronic disease.”
Finally, we must all confront patients for whom treatments offer little likelihood of benefit, yet significant risks of toxicity. These heavily pretreated patients, or those who present with refractory malignancies like pancreatic, kidney cancer or melanoma – represent a special subset.
Here the role of the physician is to decide that almost Shakespearean question, “To treat or not to treat.”
This is a particularly delicate circumstance as it forces the doctor, the patient and the family to confront the most difficult question of all, “Am I dying?” The answer is “maybe.”
Without seeming flip, every patient no matter what diagnosis, has some chance of response to therapy.
If we examine the performance characteristic of our laboratory analyses, they consistently double response rates. With this group however a doubling of response rate may still provide a rather low likelihood of meaningful benefit. If the laboratory finds drug resistance in this group, it is a near certainty that the patient will not respond.
However distressing this data may be, it may be comforting to know that the patient has left no stone unturned.
For those patients where a treatment appears active, despite their diagnosis or treatment history, then the discussion surrounding tolerance, toxicity and realistic likelihood of benefit can be undertaken intelligently.
This is the embodiment of rational therapeutics.
Dr. Robert Nagourney, has been internationally recognized as a pioneer in cancer research and personalized cancer treatment for over 20 years. He is a TEDX SPEAKER, author of the book OUTLIVING CANCER, a practicing oncologist and triple board certified in Internal Medicine, Medical Oncology and Hematology helping cancer patients from around the world at his Nagourney Cancer Institute in Long Beach, California. For more info go to NAGOURNEYCANCERINSTITUTE.COM
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