Ahead of the June meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, an abstract has been released demonstrating the startling lack of knowledge among primary care physicians (PCP) of the long-term effects of chemotherapy on cancer survivors.
Dr. Larissa Nekhlyudov of Harvard Medical School and colleagues conducted a survey of 1,072 primary care doctors and 1,130 oncologists, seeking to know which of five side effects they saw most often in their practices, or seen reported for each of four widely used chemotherapy drugs:
-- Doxorubicin
-- Paclitaxel
-- Oxaliplatin
-- Cyclophosphamide
Nekhlyudov et al were able to conclude that a mere six percent of primary care doctors know the major long term effects of the four drugs—compared to sixty-five percent of oncologists.
One might expect more from oncologists—after all, many of them prescribe these very drugs for patients every day—but the lack of knowledge among primary care physicians is said to be expected, because these aren't drugs they deal with on a daily basis in their practice.
Maybe they don't deal with the drugs on a daily basis, but they do deal with cancer survivors who have received these drugs on a daily basis. With some 12 million cancer survivors seeking follow-up, survivorship care from PCPs, it seems increasingly important that PCPs know and understand the long-term potential effects of cancer care, such as pulmonary toxicity, cardiotoxicity, nerve damage, and the development of secondary cancers, to name a few of them.
Source: ASCO
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