New Test For Cancers Sufferers Should Be More Widely Available
A molecular test that analyzed a piece of Coree Hanczyk's breast tumour told her something no oncologist in the Canadian health-care system could – she didn't require chemotherapy after all.
And she paid for it out of pocket: Ms. Hanczyk had a chunk of tumour couriered from a Toronto hospital to a California laboratory, where the test cost her $3,776 (U.S.). In so doing, she saved medicare an estimated $10,000 in unnecessary treatment and spared herself such gruelling side effects as nausea and hair loss.
The test, whose analysis of 21 genes can help predict whether a cancer is likely to return within the next decade, represents an emerging field of personalized medicine that is moving at such velocity that sluggish health-care bureaucracies can't keep pace.
“I watched my mom die because of the chemotherapy; it completely shut her body down, organ by organ,” said Ms. Hanczyk, a 45-year-old flight attendant who lives outside Toronto. “… This test has been a godsend to me.”
Each year, more than 12,000 Canadian women find themselves in the same medical grey zone: In cases of small, estrogen-receptor positive tumours, with lymph nodes free of cancer, chemotherapy is beneficial to only a few – but determining who they are is often impossible.
Click here to read the full story:
By Lisa Priest
Globe & Mail
And she paid for it out of pocket: Ms. Hanczyk had a chunk of tumour couriered from a Toronto hospital to a California laboratory, where the test cost her $3,776 (U.S.). In so doing, she saved medicare an estimated $10,000 in unnecessary treatment and spared herself such gruelling side effects as nausea and hair loss.
The test, whose analysis of 21 genes can help predict whether a cancer is likely to return within the next decade, represents an emerging field of personalized medicine that is moving at such velocity that sluggish health-care bureaucracies can't keep pace.
“I watched my mom die because of the chemotherapy; it completely shut her body down, organ by organ,” said Ms. Hanczyk, a 45-year-old flight attendant who lives outside Toronto. “… This test has been a godsend to me.”
Each year, more than 12,000 Canadian women find themselves in the same medical grey zone: In cases of small, estrogen-receptor positive tumours, with lymph nodes free of cancer, chemotherapy is beneficial to only a few – but determining who they are is often impossible.
Click here to read the full story:
By Lisa Priest
Globe & Mail
Thanks to:
Lynn Harris
Author of Unwritten Rules:
What Women Need To Know About Leading
In Today's Organisations
Lynn Harris
Author of Unwritten Rules:
What Women Need To Know About Leading
In Today's Organisations