Research is Making a Difference in Patient’s Lives
I am Dr. Jeff Kingsley and this is another edition of Riding in Cars With Researchers! I just want to talk to you briefly about research is. Research is making a difference in patient’s lives.
A Case Study in Thyroid Cancer
I just read a new research publication where a gentleman out of the United Kingdom, publishing with the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI). A seven year long trial on thyroid cancer. They’ve been able to demonstrate that patients with low-risk thyroid cancer have the same outcomes when receiving low dose radiation therapy following surgery as patients receiving high dose radiation therapy. Typically we go big, but radiation therapy is not easy. Radiation therapy causes a lot of side effects and decreases your quality of life. And this research showed that if you have low-risk thyroid cancer, you don’t need high doses of radiation. Low doses of radiation will do you just as good.
Research Changes Lives
That’s what research is. It’s why we do it. It’s those insights, those discoveries, realizing that low-risk thyroid cancer patients are being overtreated with radiation. And we are unnecessarily reducing their quality of life by over treating the radiation therapy. That’s what it’s all about! That’s why we do research. Because research changes lives! From this moment forward, low-risk thyroid cancer patients will be treated differently, they will receive lower doses, and they will live a quality of life because of that research that those people did in the United Kingdom. That’s what research is all about.
Thanks for riding along!
Send me topics you want me to talk about at jeff.kingsley@centricityresearch.com!
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