Cancer IQ

"A woman in her 50s showed up with a hallmark sign of ovarian cancer — a bloated belly." Though "the woman had mentioned this and other symptoms to her primary care doctor elsewhere in the past ... her doctor never asked about any family history of the disease — a glaring omission, since the woman’s mother had died of ovarian cancer in her 30s."

"'It was such a missed opportunity to refer her for genetic counseling or testing,'" said Dr. Katharine Esselen of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Providers should note that while most EHRs offer clinical decision support for cancer screening, these CDS tools often assume all patients are of average risk. If your software isn't incorporating genetics, family history, lifestyle and screening adherence risk, these patients remain vulnerable to a late-stage, preventable diagnosis.

A lethal cancer’s long reach - Harvard Health Family history is the top risk factor for ovarian cancer, which is diagnosed in 20,000 American women annually. Symptoms are often vague until the disease is advanced, making it hard to detect. Wom...

aims to help everyone from providers to patients understand the benefits of early cancer screening.

But today's typical patient who walks in with a late-stage cancer diagnosis is not the one who has diligently followed current, one-size fits all screening guidelines. Instead, it’s the 30-year-old who didn’t qualify for a colonoscopy yet and didn’t know they carried a genetic mutation that elevated their risk.

How can we remove barriers to precision screening and prevention? Everyone in the healthcare ecosystem has a role in ensuring patients at elevated risk aren't falling through the cracks. https://bit.ly/3F8w0LY