Survivorship

In the first year after a breast cancer diagnosis, women typically experience significant deterioration in their overall quality of life (QOL), but a program that connects new patients with breast cancer survivors following diagnosis seems to halt the decline.

A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to a convenience sample of cancer survivors (N = 237) attending an annual cancer survivors’ day organized by a community cancer center.

With 11.7 million cancer survivors in the United States, the role of navigation in survivorship is growing. As our population ages, navigators will need to focus on the specific needs of the older and elderly patients they navigate through survivorship care.

In March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the “Cancer Survivors— United States, 2007” report.

Breast cancer accounts for 1 in every 3 cancers diagnosed in American women today. About 155,000 women are living with metastatic breast cancer in the United States, and this number is expected to increase to 162,000 in 2011.

Cancer survivors are living longer and, with more than one-third of the American population experiencing a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime, it is critical to focus attention on the long-term needs of survivors.

Outcomes from the roundtable held in conjunction with the George Washington Cancer Institute Cancer Survivorship Research and Health Disparities Symposium have far-reaching implications that will impact clinical practice and how we, as clinicians, address cancer survivorship care in the future.

Patients coping with the stresses of cancer can experience depressive symptoms, with an estimated 22% to 29% of newly diagnosed patients experiencing major depressive disorder (MDD; Raison CL, Miller AH. Biol Psychiatry. 2003;54:283-294).

Most studies on survivorship and employment have focused on older patients, have not followed patients more than 2 years after diagnosis, or have been limited to one disease site. To extend knowledge on work patterns of survivors, Moran and colleagues studied prime-age (28-54 years) male and female survivors of all types of cancers.