Advances in Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer

Englewood Hospital and Medical Center's Dr. Steven Brower, Medical Director of the Cancer and Wellness Center, and Patrica Mazolla, an Advanced Practice Genetics Nurse, discuss the advances in diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

8/8/17 #2065

Excerpt:

"We are honored to be joined by Dr. Steven Brower, Medical Director, Lefcourt Family Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center, and Patricia Mazzola, who is Advanced Practice Genetics Nurse, Englewood Hospital and Medical Center. Good to see both of you. Good to see you. Thank you Steve. Are you ready for this? I think it was two and a half years ago, I'm on a tour with Warren Geller, right? Your CEO. Of this facility that you're gonna have. This is it? I was walking through, I saw concrete, I saw... What are they gonna have here? This is it. Describe what it is. Well, if you were walking there today, Steve, you'd see thousands of patients. And you'd see patients everyday, being in an incredibly beautiful, compassionate center, where we bring together all this expertise under one roof. Hmm. So patients are not moving around from doctor to doctor, from expert to expert. They're within one group. And we're trying to make their odyssey through this whole cancer experience, you know, so much more sensitive. And personal? I mean that's the... the other part of it that's fascinating to me, so personalized medicine? Quote, "tumors are not all the same"? Right. What does that mean? Well, I just want to do a little bit about personalized versus precisional. Go ahead. Precision medicine. So years ago, we used to say "personalized medicine" and people thought, "Well, they're directing it towards that particular person." Now it's really talking about the effectiveness of treatment, how we treat the cancers, and taking the whole person in context of what their disease is. Their genetics as well? Certainly genetics is huge. What's the connection between genetics...? Okay, you're diagnosed with a particular form of cancer. Your genetics. Your genetic testing that you do. What does that have to do with how you treat the patient? A lot. It has a lot to do, and it gets more and more all the time. So we're looking at if you were diagnosed with breast cancer. Right. So we're looking at your family history, your personal history, the type of tumor that you have, the biomarkers, and Dr. Brower will talk more about the tumor markers. Jump in there, because all those matt... all those factors matter, those variables matter in the protocol? Mm hmm. So let's peel it away for... Sure. ...peel it back for a second, Steve. You know, when I entered into cancer treatment 30 years ago, I would never have dreamed that we could examine the proteins and the DNA within a cell to more precisely define, for each patient, prevention perhaps. Treatment and therapy. And then survivorship. As you're living and being treated, how we can make..."