Thread by @SfPRocur

And # 3 - improving survivorship care. Like I mentioned, we have effective treatment for many breast cancers. Effective treatments mean more people living every day after a cancer diagnosis - which is SO exciting, but also poses challenges for survivors.

Some important semantics: The word survivor can be triggering for people living with disease or whose friends have died.

When I use the word survivor I mean anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer from the time of diagnosis.

Again, I’m not an expert in survivorship care but I’m passionate about it.

A cancer diagnosis affects mental health tremendously and it is important people diagnosed with cancer are offered access to mental health services.

When some people get surgery for their breast cancer, they get lymph nodes removed. The lymph system balances your circulatory system (blood) so without lymph nodes, some people develop lymphodema that at this point is irreversible.

Treating cancer is a balance between killing the cancer and keeping the person alive. There can be long term effects of cancer treatment so some research focuses on determining the least amount of treatment that still removes the disease.

The TAILORx trial looked at women whose prognosis based off a gene panel was neither low nor high risk (but rather middle) to see whether chemotherapy was necessary. The results from this trial suggested the middle set of patients don’t need chemotherapy. nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NE…

“In 2016, more than 15.5 million Americans with a history of cancer were alive; that number is projected to exceed 20 million by 2026.”

Survivorship research will be an important focus in the coming years!

cancertodaymag.org/Pages/Winter20…