Episode 041: How To Get the Best Cancer Treatment Possible
Dec 19, 2018•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
With cancer comes uncertainty. Often, you don’t really know what’s going on, yet, you have to make decisions over things that you don’t really understand. How do you know what’s happening? How do you know what’s the best option for you when it comes to treatment? Is clinical trial the right way to go? These are just some of the things we’re talking about to David who is a radiation oncologist and who also wrote a fantastic book called "Taking Charge of Cancer".
Here are some things that we cover today:
How taking charge of your treatment can improve your chances
Why understanding medical reports can make a difference
Simple strategy to get a (free!) second opinion
How understanding treatment goals can shape your decision making
and much, much more!
Links
Taking Charge of Cancer
Episode 029: What You Must Know About Clinical Trials Before Starting Treatment
Full Transcript
Joe: David, you say that taking charge of your treatment can really improve your chances. What does it mean to you?
David: Taking charge of your treatment can help to make sure that you are getting the best possible cancer treatment. We know that across the world, there are big differences in quality of cancer treatment. By making sure that you are getting access to your medical records, understanding your medical records. Making sure that you’re getting the best high-volume surgeons or radiation doctors, you can really make sure that nothing is missed and that things are proceeding as they should. Unfortunately, sometimes in the media, we hear stories of cancer treatment gone wrong.
One example of that is, not too far from where I am, there were a couple of breast cancer patients who had mastectomies, they had their breasts removed, only to find out afterwards that they didn’t have cancer at all. That the original biopsy that was done before the mastectomy was done, it didn’t show cancer, but the report was misread by their surgeon. Obviously, that’s very tragic and it’s something that we could avoid if we can start empowering patients to do things to take charge of their cancer, like getting their pathology reports and learning to understand them.
That’s what the book really does, it’s meant to be a guide book on how to take those steps, how to understand these reports that are written in a language that many of us don’t work with on a daily basis.
Joe: Yes, that’s a fantastic point you make, David. What are the sorts of things that as a patient you should watch out for in the report, in the medical report?
David: Well, I think the first thing is to know which medical reports are needed. Really, the important reports are the reports from imaging. If you have a CT scan or if you have an MRI scan, getting the report from that. Also, getting the report from the pathology. The pathology report is something that’s written, if you’ve had a biopsy, or if you’ve had a surgery. When you’ve had a biopsy or a surgery, the specimen that they take is sent to a doctor called the pathologist, who looks at the specimen under a microscope and issues a report.
All of the treatment stems from the pathology report and the imaging for most patients. Along with those two reports, usually when you meet your doctor for the first time, they also write a report, which we call a consultation report. In that consultation report, they will summarise everything that’s going on. It’s a fantastic tool if you can get a copy of that, to understand your type of cancer, the stage that you’re at and what the goals of treatment are. Some hospitals now have a setup where you can login and you can access your reports online.
At other centres, you have to go and get them printed off, which can come at a cost. I find that many people, when they get copies of their reports, they really like having them. What I often do when I see a patient who has had a scan,
