Frontier’s Dr Chris Lee joined the 18th Annual Royal Marsden Breast Cancer Meeting on 3rd October last week, at the Royal College of Physicians, London. The meeting, which brings together leading experts in breast cancer care, amongst other topics, focused on Supportive care and survivorship – specifically looking at Managing treatment side effects (Dr Matthew Brown) and Surgical options for lymphoedema (Mr. Kelvin Ramsey).
Dr Lee explained, “What came out in our discussions, was the critical importance of embedding quality-of-life interventions at the same time as oncological treatment; such as;
- Early recognition and management with compression, skincare and exercise
- Manual Lymphatic drainage and physiotherapy
- Surgical options”.
Interestingly, Dr Oreste Gentilini (Milan) during the keynote, looked at reducing unnecessary axillary interventions such as lymph node removal, which would avoid patients risking the development of complications such as lymphoedema in the first place. Dr Gentilini reviewed several clinical trials ,which seemed to confirm that axillary clearance or lymph node removal, and even sentinel node biopsies, might be safely avoided.
In the Oncology update, Professor Nick Turner and Dr Michael Hubank explored how precision molecular testing has become part of routine care, effectively tailoring treatments to tumour biology.
Dr Lee summarised, “It was a good mix of practical guidance, cutting-edge science and at times, quite thoughtful debate!”
