|
 Not knowing one’s tumor features isn’t necessarily tied to worse
outcomes, but better knowledge might help women understand treatment
decisions and take medications as directed, said Dr. Rachel
Freedman, the study’s lead author from the Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute in Boston.
Also, she said, cancer patients who understand the basis for their
treatment are generally more satisfied with that treatment.
“Nobody to my knowledge has asked how much knowledge someone had of
their own disease,” she added.
For the new study, published in the journal Cancer, Freedman and her
colleagues asked 500 women from northern California about their
breast cancers, which had been diagnosed between 2010 and 2011.
Participants were asked about their tumor grade, tumor stage and
whether or not their cancer feeds off the hormone estrogen or a
protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2).
Fifty-five percent of women said they knew if their tumor fed off
estrogen, and about a third said they knew their HER2 status. About
a third said they knew their tumor’s grade, which is the cancer’s
aggressiveness. And 82 percent of women said they knew their tumor’s
stage, which is how advanced the cancer is.
Based on their medical records, only 56 percent of women reported
the correct estrogen status, 58 percent reported the correct HER2
status and 57 percent reported the correct stage. Only about one in
five women reported the correct grade.
Overall, only 8 percent of women correctly answered all four
questions, but the lack of knowledge was more pronounced among
minority women, the researchers report.
“Even though all these questions were low for all women, we did see
difference by race and ethnicity,” Freedman said.
“What’s really nice about finding something like this is that it’s a
modifiable problem,” Freedman said. “If you can improve education
and provider awareness of this, you can do something about this in
the clinic.”
[to top of second column] |
Dr. Michelle Shayne of the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center at the
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in
Rochester, New York, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters
Health, “Breast cancer patients in general are a very savvy group of
individuals."
They "tend to read a lot and bring a lot of clippings in to their
oncologist and ask a lot of questions," she said, so the study
findings surprised her.
The results show that oncologists need to tailor their discussions
about cancer to individual patients as much as they tailor the
treatments, she said.
Also, she said, cancer survivors should receive detailed treatment
histories and information about their tumors for future medical
care.
Freedman said that in her own practice, she’s been trying to explain
patients' cancers in more detail, writing down the specifics and
making sure they understand the information.
“I think this raises awareness of the issue,” she said. “This may be
a more important issue than we previously appreciated.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1gaOuII
Cancer, online January 26, 2015.
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
