RIT in the NY Times!
The New York Times published an article this past Saturday about the underutilization of RIT, and on the front page no less! Here is a link to it:
In response to the article, which was also published in the San Diego paper as well as two Ohio papers and probably others I am unaware of, I began receiving emails early Saturday morning, and they have continued all weekend. Patients from around the country spoke of taking their third or fourth treatment. Others spoke of making a decision about the next treatment. Most had never heard of RIT. A few had vaguely heard of it. All were shocked to think that money could possibly influence treatment recommendations. Several people called that "scary." Unfortunately, it's a flaw in our health care system.
Indeed, my heartstrings have been pulled by the stories I have heard this weekend, but I am so glad that people made the effort to find me. Clearly, there are many people who find information not on the web but through more traditional sources such as newspapers. Of course I would also consider a patient's own physician to be a traditional source of medical information, and so I agonize when I hear from patients whose doctors have not explained all the options.
While neither Mort nor I can offer medical advice, we agree that all patients with every type of illness deserve to know all treatments available to them. For lymphoma patients, RIT may or may not be one of those options, and only an oncologist, expert in the field of RIT, can make that determination. And clearly, many more people can benefit from RIT than are getting it.
I am very grateful to Alex Berenson, the reporter, and the Times for shining the light on this important issue. This one story has already introduced several people to an option about which they were not aware. And undoubtedly I heard from very few people who read it. It was, in fact, the most emailed article on Saturday and the 4th on Sunday.
Mr. Berenson did an outstanding job of explaining the difficulty that RIT has had in finding its rightful place among the array of treatment options. He points out that Bexxar and Zevalin have not been clinically proven to prolong survival compared to other therapies. That's because no head-to-head comparisons have been made, and the lack thereof provides a way to avoid RIT if oncologists are so inclined. What is known is that no single agent has produced the long-term durable remissions in patients nearly as well as RIT - and that has been clinically proven!
One final thought: survivors are happy to be alive! The photographer told me (and I assume the others) that the story was serious and he did not want me to smile. The serious picture is not me - I happily wear a playful smile most of the time - and that is exactly what I'm sending to each of you as I head the hospital this glorious Monday morning for my semi-annual CT scan!
Betsy