Photo: Dr. Motaz Qadan/Mass General Brigham
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — In the latest report from the American Cancer Society, 7 in 10 people are surviving longer than five years following a cancer diagnosis.
Dr. Motaz Qadan, Surgeon in Chief at Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, has some ideas on the many factors that make this good news possible.
“First and foremost, we can attribute to the patient’s greater awareness, the fact that people are more educated about the disease process, there’s a greater wealth of information out there,” said Dr. Qadan. “In addition, there’s improvement in the earlier detection of disease.”
What’s even more interesting for healthcare workers is that a positive trajectory is most notable in high fatal cancers, like in the liver, showing a 15% survivability rise since the 1990s.
“I always make an analogy, it’s a little bit like sports nowadays, you see people running the 100-meter track, we’re talking about very fine margins, split-second kind of performances, because people have become so good at what they do. It’s very similar actually, in healthcare,” said Dr. Qadan.
Dr. Qadan said the goal is a cure, but knocking the disease down to a chronic illness would be a big win.
Some recent moves in the State House have allowed the paperwork for chronic illnesses to be cut down, which can be confusing for some. Another goal for Dr. Qadan is to simplify that same paperwork for cancer patients.
“A lot of people don't know how to navigate healthcare, and it’s because the system is very complicated as well, and so we have to try and simplify the access points,” said Dr. Qadan.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Jay Willett (@JayWillettWBZ) reports.