Global onco-systems: The challenges in optimising cancer outcomes worldwide - 17 Downloads
Global onco-systems: The challenges in optimising cancer outcomes worldwide
David Rew
The good that we do for individual cancer patients comes at a considerable economic cost. In many areas of cancer care, we are caught in an arms race of expenditure and technological advance to secure gains in survival over standard and established techniques which are often marginal in proportion to the expenditure incurred. Innovations in diagnostics, imaging, minimally invasive surgery and bio-molecular pharmaceuticals incur substantial additional costs which bring some therapeutic benefit for the lucky few, while imposing unattainably high levels of expectation and cost for the many. Competitive human nature drives this arms race on, encouraging individuals and politicians to the view that they must receive or provide treatment which is ‘‘at the cutting edge’’. Academic and specialist journals are of course also guilty in fuelling this escalation of expectation, of necessity choosing the cutting edge over the tried, tested and boring, and reflecting our collective and voracious appetite for novelty for its own sake.
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