WCOE: Peter Bach’s “The Day I Started Lying to Ruth”
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. "To do this as a physician and esteemed policy expert, allows the rest of us to recognize that no matter how much we know intellectually... we all ...
Study Raises Questions & Choices for Women Screening for Breast Cancer
Several articles published on Tuesday, February 11, reported on a study in the British Medical Journal which finds death rates from breast cancer from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. The articles points out that the screening also had consequential effects when mammograms detected ...
Amy Berman Discusses Range of Cancer Care Issues
Harold Pollack interviews Amy Berman for a recent post in the Washington Post Wonkblog. Ms. Berman speaks openly about her experiences living with Stage IV breast cancer and her decision to forgo aggressive treatments in favor of palliative care. The interview touches on issues ranging from personal to policy, emphasizes ...
“Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer”
The New York Times Magazine of April 28, 2013, features a story by cancer survivor Peggy Orenstein entitled “Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer.” The cover story is available online in advance of its publication in the magazine. Orenstein concludes her lengthy story about breast cancer treatment and research with ...
Free-floating DNA from Tumor Could Provide Early Warning
In an article in the USA Today of March 13, 2013, reporter Liz Szabo directs attention to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Szabo says that the small study suggests that doctors can measure circulating tumor DNA in women with advanced breast cancer in order to ...
Deciding About Breast Cancer Chemotherapy
To make truly informed decisions, patients must understand the potential risks and benefits of their treatment options. In this Forbes article, Peter Ubel describes his research on how to present complicated medical information in a way that patients can comprehend. As if being diagnosed with breast cancer wasn’t bad enough, ...
Chemotherapy can impair cognition more than two decades later
More than 20 years after treatment, breast cancer patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy exhibited cognitive deficits compared with women who were never diagnosed with cancer. The results, which appeared online February 27 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, suggest that the phenomenon known as chemobrain can persist for decades after ...
Most women with cancer want a role in making decisions
About two-thirds of women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer want to take part in making decisions about their treatment, according to a new survey of patients from five different countries. Some of these women want complete control over making treatment choices while others want to share the decision with ...
