ASK THE DOC: High Grade Breast & Kidney Cancer and Diffuse B‑Cell Lymphoma

His­to­ry Les­son: hap­pened in 1942. What is the big thing regard­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion? There has been so much about 5G. The whole con­cept of wifi and the tech­nol­o­gy to exist began on this day in 1942 when a patent was issued for fre­quen­cy hop­ping spread sys­tem com­mu­ni­ca­tion device by Hedy Lamarr and com­pos­er named George Antheil. 

Ques­tion 1: 55 year old patient has missed check ups due to covid since 2019. Her mam­mo­gram showed a lump as big as a plum and was biop­sied to show high grade breast can­cer. Dur­ing a pre­treat­ment CT scan a mass adja­cent to the kid­ney was found and diag­nosed with high grade kid­ney can­cer. What can be done? Triple Neg­a­tive Breast Can­cer with immunother­a­py has just hit the news in the last few weeks. We are going to talk about immunother­a­py. Adding the immunother­a­py drug will change the results of the can­cer. Patient didn’t have any high risk things to cause kid­ney can­cer. No test to detect kid­ney can­cer except a full body scan and insur­ance won’t pay for it, but if she was going to her doc­tor on a reg­u­lar basis with a urine test it may have been detect­ed. Two drugs are stan­dard immunother­a­py drugs for treat­ment for kid­ney can­cer will work togeth­er to increase the response.
Clin­i­cal tri­als are impor­tant to advance medicine. 

Ques­tion 2: Patient had pain in the abdomen. The CT scan showed his spleen was large. The spleen was removed and had dif­fuse B cell lym­phoma in it. Oncol­o­gist and PCP pre­scribed RCHOP for 3 months, Dr. Wha­ley has always sug­gest­ed 6 dos­es. Dr. Wha­ley dis­cussed why 3 dos­es will be given. 

Med­ical head­lines this week: A Sin­gle Test Can Detect 50 Can­cers, But Isn’t Ready For Primetime.