Webcast

On Wednesday night, Patients Against Lymphoma posted another segment of Lymphomation Live, their weekly webcast on topics related to lymphomas of all types. This week's topic was an especially relevent one for me: Indolent Lymphomas.


The guest was Dr. Mitchell Smith of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

If you want to listen to the show, click here. It's about an hour long. The link near the bottom of the page might not work, so you can access it from the blue box at the top left. Also, be warned: at a bout the 12 minute mark, the host loses the connection to the guest, and it comes back just before the 18 minute mark. It was recorded live -- skip those 6 minutes and deal with it.


A few things that Dr. Smith said that stood out for me:


*I liked that he said that, with slower-growing-but-harder-to-cure indolent lymphomas, researchers need to be "smarter, not stronger." More and nastier chemo won't do the job. Researchers are working on lots of ways to outsmart indolent lymphomas. Smith, a researcher himself, is excited about the work being done with antobodies (hopefully, even more effective than Rituxin), and genetics-based microenvironment research.


* Smith talked about the differences between the different grades and stages of indolent lymphomas, and about what is called the FLIPI index. FLIPI stands for Follicular Lymphoma International Prognostic Index. The FLIPI index is a very rough guideline that takes several different factors into consideration in helping doctors and patients determine how aggressively to treat fNHL. I've read about FLIPI a few times in the last year, and thought about posting something about it. But, really, it's one of those things that can get people panicked, getting them to think they are automatically worse off than they probably are. More numbers that don't mean anything directly to an individual. Smith thinks likewise.


* Smith addressed the idea of indolent lymphomas being incurable. Interesting take: it's possible that we've already found a cure. But we won't know that for another 25 years, when lots of people have been in remission for that long. Then we can look back and say, "What we did in 2000 was actually a cure." Another reason I don't get too caught up in the idea of it being "incurable."


*He discussed Watch and Wait, too. He's one of those doctors who stiull believes that W&W is a good idea (not all do). He went through the usual arguments for Waiting, but he added another one: getting some treatments now might make you ineligible for some treatments that come down the chute later on. I also thought it was interesting that he said, in his expereince, it takes about 6-12 months for a "Waiter" to get used to the idea, but it gets easier when we realize we're doing OK, and we learn to trust our doctor.


*He gets into some current clinical trials, especially on the kind of biological treatments that so many specialists are excited about. "Maybe," he says, "some day, chemo will be a thing of the past." More effective, less toxic treatments? Amen to that.

Betsy and PAL are doing a really nice job with these webcasts; they're worth checking in on every week.