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What topics/experts would you like to see on The Breastcancer.org Podcast?

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  • cure-ious
    cure-ious Posts: 3,146
    edited February 24

    Also, I have been ruminating on the recent death of actress Catherine O'Hara, who died of a pulmonary embolism that was apparently a secondary consequence to her cancer. Although we hear from time to time about increased risks of blood clots just from having cancer (like the cancer debris from dead cells floating in the bloodstream?) I was surprised to learn its the second most common cause of death for cancer patients, and that many of our drugs also carry with them blood clot risks, not just chemos but some targeted drugs like Verzenio and others. It might be worth a podcast to heighten awareness, though I'm not sure what most of us could do to protect ourselves. Some stats would be useful, maybe the increased scans we get are actually helpful if they find lung clots early ? and I wonder how often scans do pick up lung clots in cancer patients compared to the general population

  • @cure-ious I've found an expert, a researcher at NYU Langone. I'm working to schedule a podcast on histotripsy in April. Thank you so much for your suggestion!

    Jamie

  • Another good idea, @cure-ious We do have this page on the site: https://www.breastcancer.org/treatment-side-effects/blood-clots-and-phlebitis which we are in the process of updating to be more complete. My understanding is that cancers produce chemicals that makes blood "stickier" — meaning the cancer tells the liver to produce more clotting factors. I'm not sure why this is. It's estimated that about 20 percent of people with cancer will develop a clot and people with cancer of the pancreas, uterus, lungs, stomach, kidney, brain, and bladder more likely to develop a clot. Interestingly, not liver, as far as I can tell.

  • cure-ious
    cure-ious Posts: 3,146

    Jamie, for the histotripsy, I had wondered what it could be used for in cases where there are maybe many liver mets, but maybe it could be particularly useful to beat back mets when someone needs to go off drugs (like do a drug washout before starting a clinical trial)- surely better than having to take chemo for that

    also to debulk when liver has a lot of tumors, and/or maybe this can get rid of some not very prevalent but possibly dangerous liver met mutations, like to reduce heterogeneity?

    Also some places apparently can only localize tumors with ultrasound, which is hard to do as that's not very sensitive, but at other places use a CT-fusion where they overlapy a CT scan with an ultrasound and also line stuff up with whatever landmarks they can see in the liver, like bile ducts, stents or bits of whatever crap-

    And they can rotate the table during treatment, or flip it completely to get at hard places, it sound like access and tumor sizes are some of the issues…

  • snm
    snm Posts: 259

    Another topic of interest to me is graves disease (hyperthyroidism) and breast cancer but this could be extended to hypothyroidism too

  • Thank you, @snm I have hyperthyroidism, so this topic is of great interest to me as well. I will look for an expert.

  • aj
    aj Posts: 420

    I’m interested in research thar suggests that having Covid can awaken dormant cancer cells.