Comment: Much learning does not teach one to have intelligence
Jonathan Kell
pp 19-19
As Heraclitus observed, ‘Much learning does not teach one to have intelligence’. How right he was! Recently, I drove from Cardiff to Hay-on-Wye to visit the book festival. Being something of a book collector, this was not a chore, especially since, at the end of my 70-minute drive, there was a talk given by Garry Kasparov.
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Reaching young people with cancer
Sam Smith
pp 20-20
Around 2,500 young people are diagnosed with cancer in the UK each year. For the past 27 years, Teenage Cancer Trust has been providing specialist facilities and expert staff to help support young people with cancer in principal treatment centres. This service reaches around half of the young people diagnosed each year; to ensure all young people have access to specialist age-appropriate care, the charity has begun rolling out its unique nursing and support service.
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Post-ASH Significant Highlights
Charlotte Graham
pp 21-22
The Post-ASH Significant Highlights meeting was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London on 9th February 2017. It brought together a number of experts from the UK to draw out the key findings presented at the 58th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting in San Diego in December 2016.
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End-of-life care in patients with blood cancers
Debra Howell
pp 23-23
Several years ago, my colleagues and I identified that patients with blood cancers (leukaemias, lymphomas and multiple myeloma) were more than twice as likely to die in hospital and less than half as likely to receive input from specialist palliative care services than those with other malignancies. We wanted to understand the reasons for these findings and, as the largest charitable funder of palliative and end-of-life care in the UK, Marie Curie supported the development of a study to investigate this.
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A rare presentation of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia/lymphoma in an elderly patient
Zar Ni Soe and Sahra Ali
pp 24-25
A 75-year-old gentleman presented to a district hospital with a six-week history of progressive bilateral lower limb weakness, persistent back pain, loss of weight and drenching night sweats.
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Tackling late diagnosis in multiple myeloma
Monica Morris
pp 26-26
Multiple myeloma is a complex cancer to diagnose, in part due to its relative rarity and non-specific symptoms. Recent treatment advances and associated improvement in overall survival have not been mirrored by improvements in the speed of diagnosis, and this type of cancer remains one of the most difficult to diagnose.
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Laboratory testing for specific tyrosine kinase inhibitor-associated adverse events in CML
Nick Duncan
pp 27-29
The introduction of tyrosine kinase inhibitors has transformed the management of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) in the past two decades. The majority of patients diagnosed with CML can now anticipate to have a near-normal life expectancy, but, to achieve this outcome, they will be required to take a long-term oral treatment every day. Because of this, healthcare professionals looking after patients with CML need to consider not just the monitoring of clinical response markers, such as BCR-ABL transcripts, but also the monitoring and management of adverse events, given the significant potential impact these can have on both medication adherence and quality of life.
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Case study masterclass answers
Zar Ni Soe and Sahra Ali
pp 30-31
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