Key points from today’s guests:
Cynthia Newsome, former news anchor; living with metastatic breast cancer
- Cynthia may be best known to everyone as the news anchor who brought stories into the homes of Kansas residents everywhere.
- But she was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in 2011. It's one of the rarest and aggressive breast cancers and it affects black women 2.7 times more than white women.
- After recovering, in 2019 the cancer came back and it has metastasized and spread.
- She previously interviewed Dr. Sharma for a story about the cancer research she was working on. She never thought the story would come full circle where she was working with Dr. Sharma on her own cancer treatment.
- Cynthia said there's a comfort that you get even though you're on a clinical trial with a drug treatment that has never been tried before. She explained that it's a very personal process, where they explain what's going on and she felt comfortable and excited about participating in something that can help others.
- She has embraced her mission to help people understand and not fear breast cancer or any other cancer and to help them get screened and get diagnosed early for the best treatment.
Dr. Priyanka Sharma, medical oncologist, The University of Kansas Cancer Center
- Typically when breast cancer goes outside the breast and is in other organs, it requires some form of treatment on a more or less continuous basis to ensure that the cancer stays under control. Those treatments vary by the type of cancer it is.
- For some cancers, we're fortunate to have oral drugs. Now that we have immunotherapy, we can do a certain number of rounds of chemotherapy and back off the chemotherapy and stay on immunotherapy, which is less toxic as compared to chemotherapy.
- And then of course there are clinical trials that are looking at new ways to treat cancer.
- Cynthia started this clinical trial more than a year ago. It is a combination of an oral drug and an IV drug and we sequence these to get the best approach.
- The goal of this study is to determine the most effective combination of these two drugs. And then we would need to perform a larger study to understand the effectiveness of this combination on cancer on at different stages.
- It is important to live your life and be mindful of your body.
Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director, infection prevention & control, The University of Kansas Health System
- COVID hospitalizations this week are at 22 active patients. Last week, it was 19.
- One student at a local high school is being treated for tuberculosis, so the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment is sending out more information to parents, students and staff about it.
- TB is more of the classical airborne spread, but it is difficult to get -- you have to be in a room with somebody who is actively spreading the bacteria through coughing because it is mostly a lung infection, although other sides of the body can be infected.
- Treatment is typically six months to 12 months depending on the level of disease that you have. And it is typically treated with four drugs and then going down to two-drug therapy if there is not significant resistance of that bacteria. It is a very long course of treatment.
Morning Medical Update is on TV in October! The four-part series Cancer: Choices, Hope and Science will air on Tuesdays in October. In the Kansas City area, it’s on KCTV5 at 9:30 a.m. and in Topeka, it’s on WIBW at 9 a.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 4 at 8 a.m. CT is the next Morning Medical Update. It’s Pink Week -- the first week in October dedicated to all things breast cancer. Learn more about how new proton therapy is a gamechanger for treating cancer.
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