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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Advanced technology and an emphasis on patient education have led a shift in recent oncology trends. As patients have more information at their disposal, including opinion-based or even false information that is so easy to find online, hospitals have invested more time and money into educating their patients about their diagnosis and treatment options. Providing more information enables the patient to feel more comfortable and well informed about what to expect in the coming months. Even when it isn’t good news, a greater effort is being made to make patients and their families aware of the treatments and potential side effects along the path ahead.
Palliative Care
Palliative care is an approach to serious or terminal illness that focuses on providing relief for the symptoms and side effects of an illness during treatment of the disease. The aim of palliative care is to improve the quality of life of the patient while they undergo the physical and emotional stresses associated with their malady. In the past, this type of approach was often ignored or not implemented until the very end of the patient’s life. However, modern oncology units strive to keep patients as comfortable as possible from the very beginning. A reduction in stress can allow the body to devote its energy to strengthening and recovery, rather than being mired in the immediate pains and distractions.
A big aspect of palliative oncology care is to provide counseling, therapy and pharmacological intervention for a patient’s suffering. Skilled nurses specializing in this field work with specialists, practitioners and therapists to personalize the assessment and management of symptoms. While certification and training programs are in place for the nurses who treat the patients, palliative care also relies on the willingness of caregivers and family members to participate throughout the course of an illness.
Personalized Medicine
With personalized oncological medicine, patients are grouped by their potential risk to certain diseases or treatments. This practice often employs cellular and genetic analysis of a patient to determine how they may react to certain types of drugs. In oncology, personalized medicine goes a long way in determining which drug should be used, specific to an individual’s type of cancer. There is no one size fits all model for cancer treatment under this approach. Environment, history and genetics can all play a part in determining the best course of action for treatment. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are employed to examine genetic variants between populations of people with similar diseases. By comparing the DNA of individuals with varying phenotypes for a disease, researchers can draw important conclusions regarding a patient’s likely response to treatment.
Communicating Awareness of Cost
Unfortunately, the health care system often seems flawed for those who have spent a long time within hospital walls. This has been an age old challenge for patients and healthcare providers who are constantly up against insurance companies to negotiate a fair rate. There has been a push in recent years for more transparency surrounding discussions of cost between the doctor and patient, to ensure that the patient and his or her family truly grasps what may or may not be covered by insurance funds. Many hospitals employ financial counselors specifically for their oncology units, who act as intermediaries between the patient, the hospital and the insurance company. Hospitals are also working to put some of the choices in treatment options back onto the patient, so he or she can determine whether a high cost drug is really improving the quality of life significantly enough to keep taking it.
New Technologies
Big pharma and biotech startups have both worked to usher in new oncology technologies. New technologies in bioinformatics have allowed more room for drug discovery based on GWAS plots. Researchers like Dr. Bruce Eaton have headed pharmaceutical startups that strive to bridge the gap between “big data” in medicinal chemistry and “big data” in phenotypic screens. Updates in technology within the hospital network are also facilitating the communication between hospitals and practitioners by allowing easy, immediate access to a patient’s entire medical record. These type of upgrades really cut down on redundancies and lag time, and prevent patients who are already going through a tough time to feel like they are being rushed through the system and ignored.
Oncology and the biosciences in general have undergone drastic advancements in their research methods and technologies over the past few years. The success of biotech startups and their collaboration with large pharmaceutical companies has ushered in a new generation of applied sciences that have given way to better outcomes with personalized and palliative care. Patients are also better educated regarding their diagnosis and treatment options, which allows them to communicate their needs to their caregivers and families. Patients who are better informed feel more comfortable about their options for the future. Being able to avoid giving people the impression that they are stepping alone into the unknown can go far to improve the psychological well being of those with illnesses. Open communication and stellar new technologies are making the modern hospital system a much more well-oiled machine.
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