Samyukta Mullangi, Medical Oncologist at Tennessee Oncology and Senior Medical Director at Thyme Care, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“This weekend, I read Tatiana Schlossberg’s essay ‘A Battle with My Blood‘, in which she recounts her diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia just after giving birth – a shock, a fight, and a moment of reckoning about how fragile life can be. In between the heroic transplants and CAR-T treatments, she recounts the role of the care ecosystem – the nurses who brought blankets, the doctors who visited daily, the family who showed up. Life-saving scaffolds that kept her going.
I read that in the wake of this Lancet report (linked in comments) on the ‘human crisis of cancer’ – ‘patients and families across global contexts continue to report being unheard, unsupported, and, at times, actively harmed by care structures that prioritise technical precision over human presence. This Lancet Oncology Commission proposes that the human crisis of cancer is not defined by pathology, mortality, or cause, but by the erosion of meaning, connection, and compassion in the experience of cancer.’
Modern cancer care is characterized by both massive patient volumes translating into high daily outpatient census, and frequent paradigm-shifting therapeutic leaps that take time for oncologists to ingest and translate into practice – put together, it can leave little bandwidth for the personal touches that distinguish good from great patient care. A tricky problem to solve within modern delivery system constraints.”
Title: The human crisis in cancer: a Lancet Oncology Commission
Authors: Gary Rodin, Amalya Feldman, Dario Trapani, Mac Skelton, Karla Unger-Saldaña, Beverley Essue, Rille Pihlak, Catherine Walshe, William E Rosa, Matthew P Banegas, Miguel Zambrano-Lucio, Rawaz Salah Daood, Ajay Aggarwal, Omar Dewachi, Gilla K Shapiro, Murallitharan Munisamy, Harenthri Devy Alagir Rajah, Shrikant Atreya, Vijay Shree Dhyani, Yek-Ching Kong, Mebin Mathew, Carol Y Ochoa-Dominguez, Arathi Prahallada Rao, Seema Rajesh Rao, Srinagesh Simha, Nancy Preston, Wendy Wing Tak Lam, Hanae Davis, Camilla Zimmermann, Eve Namisango, Christian Ntizimira, Elizabeth Smyth, Madeline Li, Naveen Salins, Nirmala Bhoo-Pathy, and Richard Sullivan
You can read the Full Article in The Lancet Oncology.
More posts featuring Samyukta Mullangi.