Further to this post in which we referred to this article which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 22 Oct 2017, and to the three quotations from this article which we reproduced in it, one of which is this:-
Of course, lessening the chances of patients with rare and less common cancers seeing a procession of clinicians who may know little and have even less experience treating their specific cancers is kindergarten stuff with modern communication technology.
On the face of it, it’s simply a matter of asking Oncologists what cancers they specialise in identifying and treating it, and making their replies readily available to those who may need their assistance.
If you go to the Rare Cancers Australia website, you’ll find a directory listing more than 150 cancers which they’ve identified – rare and less common cancers as well as more common ones. Of course there are lots of other such directories on various websites. We believe that in an ideal world, beside each of the cancers on these directories there would be the names and details of doctors who specialise in helping people to deal with it. But our guess would be that this sort of thing is a million miles away from happening.
We recently came across the details on one Oncologist, about whom it was said that her main interests are, “breast, lung and brain cancers.” Absolutely bizarre!!!
It seems to us that, if you were a person who had a particular rare and less common cancer and you consulted a woman like this and it turned out that she had real expertise in helping you, it would be like winning the lottery.
More later.