This week the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a proposed rule stating that the scientific evidence was sufficient to support reimbursement for counseling on the risks and benefits of lung cancer screening as well as lung cancer screening with low dose computed tomography in high risk individuals and once per year. CMS will pay for such services when provided to beneficiaries at high risk for lung cancer and when provided by physicians and centers with specific qualifications.
The nation's academic cancer centers are a national resource that will increase in value as remarkable changes continue in biomedical research, cancer care, and health policy.
In America, cutting-edge inventions are seen as the gateway to the future. However, the hazard of credulously accepting new technology into medical practice was warned against in a 2008 Journal of the American Medical Association editorial “Gizmo Idolatry.”
Following our discovery that my wife's occult uterine cancer was morcellated using a gynecological power morcellator, we initiated a vigorous campaign to protect others from this avoidable harm. It is now increasingly clear that one in 350-500 women with symptomatic fibroids have occult or missed uterine cancer lurking in what a majority of gynecological surgeons have assumed to be benign tumors.
We are facing a disturbing paradox in science. We have unprecedented potential for advancements spurred by current technologies. But at the same time we are confronting flat to declining funding.
As funding issues surrounding the NCI's new National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) have been a prominent topic of recent news and discussions, to help inform the cancer research community, we are taking this opportunity to share data regarding NCTN funding to the Children's Oncology Group (COG).
Studies assessing the merits of cancer screening tend to get a lot of play in the news media. It seems every six months or so a new study makes a big splash.
