Top in hem/onc: Oncology workforce shortage; blood cancer treatment
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The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated an already ongoing staffing crisis in oncology, as well as throughout the entire health care workforce, experts said.
“More than 300,000 health care providers dropped out of the workforce in 2021,” Shikha Jain, MD, FACP, associate professor of medicine with tenure in the division of hematology and oncology at the University of Illinois Cancer Center in Chicago, told Healio. “For oncology in particular, a lack of oncologists means delays in diagnosis and treatment for patients with cancer.”
It was the top story in hematology/oncology last week.
Another top story was about promising results of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy as a treatment for blood cancer.
Read these and more top stories in hematology/oncology below:
Oncology practices struggle ‘to run at all levels’ amid workforce shortage
Fears of an oncology workforce shortage have been mounting for more than a decade as both the percentage of oncologists nearing retirement age and number of Americans with a history of cancer increase annually. Read more.
‘Exciting’ research spotlights CAR-T’s evolving role in blood cancer treatment
Only a decade ago, many in oncology considered chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy too fringe for real-world use. Read more.
Social factors, tumor biology equally linked to racial disparity in breast cancer survival
Black women with ER-positive, early-stage breast cancer appeared to be at significantly higher risk for death than their white counterparts, according to study results published in JAMA Oncology. Read more.
Cancer screenings in US continued to lag during year 2 of pandemic
Rates of past-year screening for breast, cervical and prostate cancer in 2021 remained below prepandemic levels as millions of eligible Americans continued to forgo testing, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Read more.
Adjuvant nivolumab improves outcomes in high-risk urothelial cancer
Adjuvant nivolumab improved outcomes compared with placebo for patients with high-risk muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma, according to study results. Read more.