Survivors' Needs
Posted 5/21/2012
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As we all know, there is increasing attention being paid to issues of concern to cancer survivors. This means that reseach is looking both at the possible physical medium and long term side effects of treatments and at the intense psychological and psychosocial issues that confront many of us. The Institute of Medicine published a big report in 2005 that really jump-started this effort. There is still a long way to go, and this article from the Lancet addresses some of those needs:
Many US cancer survivors still lost in transition
A 2005 US Institute of Medicine report championed care plans for people who survive cancer. But, as Bob Kirsch reports, many survivors are still missing out on the close follow-up that they need.
Eva Grunfeld of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, University of Toronto, Canada, greeted the 2005 Institute of Medicine (IOM) reportadvocating cancer survivorship care plans (SCPs) with enthusiasm and her team "vigorously" implemented the recommendations.
This June, when she chairs the session-Optimizing Effi cient and Effective Care of Cancer Survivors-at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), she will bring a perspective that looks to refine how and in what form SCPs should best be used. The importance of SCPs is, however, assured. Julia Rowland, director of the Office of Cancer Survivorship at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the US National Institutes of Health, explained that "there is growing pressure on the oncology community to address care after cancer" now that cancer is increasingly seen as a "chronic illness".
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