“Online technologies have transformed communications in practically every aspect of our lives, and now we’re seeing they’re also allowing patients to take an active role in their care and get immediate access to their care provider,” said ASCO Expert Harold J. Burstein, MD, PhD, FASCO. “It’s impressive that something as simple as this not only improves quality of life, but in this case, helps patients live longer. I think we’ll soon see more cancer centers and practices adopting this model.”
“Online technologies have transformed communications in practically every aspect of our lives, and now we’re seeing they’re also allowing patients to take an active role in their care and get immediate access to their care provider,” said ASCO Expert Harold J. Burstein, MD, PhD, FASCO. “It’s impressive that something as simple as this not only improves quality of life, but in this case, helps patients live longer. I think we’ll soon see more cancer centers and practices adopting this model.”
A randomized clinical trial of 766 patients shows that a simple intervention ? a web-based tool that enables patients to report their symptoms in real time, triggering alerts to clinicians ? can have major benefits, including longer survival. Patients with metastatic cancer who used the tool to regularly report symptoms while receiving chemotherapy lived a median of 5 months longer than those who did not use the tool.
These findings will be presented in ASCO’s Plenary Session, which features four abstracts deemed to have the greatest potential to impact patient care, out of the more than 5,000 abstracts featured as part of the 2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
“Patients receiving chemotherapy often have severe symptoms, but doctors and nurses are unaware of these symptoms up to half of the time,” said lead study author Ethan M. Basch, MD, MSc, FASCO, Professor of Medicine at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center of the University of North Carolina, who was practicing at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York when the study was conducted. “We show that using a web-based symptom reporting system that alerts the care team about problems leads to actions that alleviate suffering and improve patient outcomes.”
Read more at American Society of Clinical Oncology
