Oncologists debate providing patients with fewer cancer treatments, not more – CTV
April 25, 2023
A group of oncologists, patients and advocates is meeting in Kingston, Ont., this week to discuss a revolutionary idea in cancer treatment: maybe oncologists should encourage less treatment for patients in order to focus on quality of life and care.
Dr. Christopher Booth, a medical oncologist and health services researcher at Queen’s University and the co-leader of the very first Common Sense Oncology Symposium, believes cancer patients are often given treatments that, in the long run, only offer very small benefits.
“Most of the treatments that we strongly support are the standard treatments: surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and new cancer medicines,” Booth told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday. “But increasingly, some of our new treatments might not even help people live any longer or improve their quality of life. They might shrink tumours on a CAT scan for a couple of months, but that’s a very different outcome than what many patients and their families would want.”
