Dr Crystal S. Denlinger Calls for Personalized Care in Cancer Survivorship

As innovations in cancer care transform the disease into a chronic illness, Crystal S. Denlinger, MD, Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, says that the survivorship population encompasses more than early stage patients but survivors of long term metastatic disease as well.

Many of the challenges that Dr Denlinger says comes along with cancer survivorship is helping the patient come to terms with the new lifestyle changes that treatment and therapy causes. She adds that patients in different stages of survivorship require different care methods.

“Survivorship care has to be broad enough and as providers, we have to be willing to provide care across those three components of care but with different focuses depending on what stage of disease or what component of survivorship an individual person is living in,”Dr Denlinger says.