Focus on care plans, quality of life for cancer survivors

Physicians are looking for ways to enhance care after cancer treatment for this growing patient population.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Oct. 22/29, 2007.

The 50-something woman had survived two cancers, but Patricia Ganz, MD, an oncologist in Los Angeles, had to convince her that she still needed screenings for other carcinomas, just like any woman her age. And, because she had received radiation for breast cancer, which can increase the risk of heart disease, she urgently needed to see a physician who could help modify her cardiovascular risk factors.

"We cured her breast cancer. We cured her lymphoma. But we can't forget lipids and colonoscopy. We cannot give up on important health promotion," said Dr. Ganz, director of cancer prevention and control research at Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

With the acknowledgement that more effective cancer treatment is creating a significant population of cancer survivors, physicians and other health care professionals are devising the means to provide better care for these patients. The goal is to ease the transition from oncology to primary care and other specialties to make it more likely that both routine health care needs, as well as those specific to having a cancer history, are met.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology last month published online survivorship care plans for those who have had this disease of the breast and colon. These blueprints outline for patients and physicians what treatments have been administered to what kind of cancer and the follow-up that might be needed.

More versions are expected, and the organization is working to get this documentation incorporated into electronic medical records. Cancer survivorship also was the subject of sessions at the Ninth Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium and the Chicago Supportive Oncology Conference, both in Chicago in September.