In 2005 there was a decline in the total number of cancer deaths reported in the United States, the first time this has occurred since records began in 1931. Although this is good news, it highlights another aspect of cancer treatment that is often overlooked — the fate of patients who survive cancer.
The total number of cancer survivors was more than 10 million in the United States in 2001, a point highlighted by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) president Sandra J. Horning at this years' annual meeting in June. We might like to think of these patients as having regained their pre-cancer quality of life, but this is often not the case. Improving the quality of life of patients who survive cancer is not simply the domain of heath-care workers, it also involves basic research areas such as pharmacogenomics. Anthracyclines are a case in point: they have significantly improved the rates of survival of children diagnosed with cancer, but some patients develop severe cardiac-related problems 10–15 years after treatment. Polymorphisms that might predict this cardiac toxicity are being identified and actively pursued.
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