A team of cancer specialists from OncoLink.org, the award-winning cancer Web-based resource of the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, has launched OncoLife, the first and only individualized plan-of-care based on the national Institute of Medicine's recommendations for adult cancer survivors.
Free and easy to use, the new program – soon to be available in Spanish – provides cancer survivors with information regarding the health risks they face as a result of cancer therapies, as well as a defined plan of action to maintain their health once they are out of treatment.
“The good news for cancer survivors is that their numbers are growing,” said James Metz, MD, a radiation oncologist and editor-in-chief of OncoLink. “Thanks to more successful cancer therapies, an estimated 10 million survivors are living in the United States today. Unfortunately, cancer treatments are not without consequences and many of these survivors are dealing with the long term effects of treatments with little or no guidance.”
The OncoLife program, written for survivors of adult cancer, is a simple on-line questionnaire that patients, or their caregivers, can complete.
- First, survivors go to the OncoLink homepage http://www.oncolink.org and click on the link for the OncoLife page.
- Next, patients anonymously answer a few demographic questions and seven disease-specific questions, such as type of cancer, treatment, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery, etc.
- Once all the questions are answered and submitted, OncoLife produces a personalized, comprehensive long-term survivorship care plan for free.
- Participants are then encouraged to review their personalized plan with their health care team – primary care physicians, gynecologists, cardiologists, etc. – to further assess their risk and become active participants in their own follow-up care.
Cancer patients have to endure many negative side effects of treatment, and they don't all stop once it is discontinued. For example, chemotherapy can cause cognitive impairment. Radiation therapy administered near the heart or major arteries can cause premature heart disease. Women treated for Hodgkin's disease as children run an increased risk of developing breast cancer as adults.
“We were getting an increasing number of e-mails at OncoLink from cancer patients all over the world asking basically the same thing: ‘Is what's happening to me a result of my cancer treatment?',” said Carolyn Vachani, RN, MSN, AOCN, oncology nurse educator and creator of OncoLife. “Often, their own oncologists would tell them, ‘No, it wasn't.' So, as more and more questions about long-term survivorship came flooding in, we realized how many people didn't have reliable health care resources to help them chart a survivorship plan. We knew we had to help and we knew we had to create a plan that anyone could access.”
So Vachani, with input from fellow colleagues and OncoLink staff, devised a simple on-line questionnaire that patients could complete or caregivers could complete for their loved ones. The result – the OncoLife Survivorship Care Plan – is a free, easy to understand, practical tool that patients can use together with to the guidance of their primary care physician to chart out their health care future.
What distinguishes OncoLink and OncoLife from other Web-based cancer information resources is that both are completely run by oncology physicians, nurses and other health care professional from Penn's Abramson Cancer Center. “We're real doctors and nurses who see real cancer patients every day,” said Maggie Hampshire, RN, BSN, OCN, a radiation oncology nurse and managing editor of OncoLink. “We're the ones providing the information on our website and responding to patient inquiries – not copy writers or PR agency consultants. We don't just write about people living with cancer, we're helping them get on with life after it.”