Oct. 13--While multidisciplinary physician clinics may help in treating some complex cancers, this team approach also is in service of what has been dubbed more personalized care for malignant diseases.
"Personalized care has come to the forefront as recently as three to fi ve years ago," according to Dr. Charles J. Lusch, medical director at the Reading Hospital Regional Cancer Center.
Such care takes into account unique genetic and environmental factors that may require targeted therapies, he said.
"You can have two identical colon cancer cases with identical masses in the same spots, and one patient responds to chemotherapy and targeted drugs and one does not -- what's the diff erence?" Lusch said.
Lusch said what cancer researchers and physicians are learning is that molecular and genetic differences in individual tumors may be so signifi cantly diff erent that they exhibit unique behaviors and responses to treatment.
"Now is the age of targeted therapy, and it's exploding," Lusch said. "Of course, all this has an economic impact in the health field, because there is no point in using a $30, 000-a -day drug on someone if it's not going to work."
Personalized medicine stresses the importance of individualizing all cancer treatments with the help of more precise diagnostic tests, tumor profiling and genetic screening in order to use the most specialized, targeted therapies.
"We are getting more and more technological expertise to pinpoint proper treatment for some cancers, but our other goal over the next several years also must be to elevate the patient experience," Lusch said.
Contact Bruce R. Posten: 610-371-5059 or bposten@readingeagle.com.
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