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Multidisciplinary Care
One Visit, One Team, One Treatment Plan
The Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center at Loyola University Health System provides a holistic approach to cancer care that includes image renewal.
What does multidisciplinary care mean to you? At other health-care institutions, the term multidisciplinary care can mean that you meet with many different specialists. Often, you have to schedule these appointments yourself, and the various doctor visits could take weeks, or even months. At Loyola, multidisciplinary cancer care means an intensive, team-oriented approach that was specifically designed to offer you consultation, evaluation and treatment recommendations in a single coordinated visit from a team of physicians and surgeons of various disciplines. Our unique approach offers a streamlined process that enables you to start your treatment as soon as possible, reducing your stress and, in many cases, improving your outcome.
This multidisciplinary approach extends beyond physicians to include nurses, nutritionists, social workers, cosmetologists, alternative medicine physicians and other support staff who have been trained to meet the special needs of cancer patients. |
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A Comprehensive Care
The Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center provides an environment where physicians and researchers have access to each other, as well as patients. Here you will meet with everyone on your cancer care team, often in one location on one day, as opposed to a multi-appointment, multi-day process. You will leave with answers instead of questions.
In addition to convenience, Loyola offers access to the most cutting-edge treatments. Loyola’s cancer researchers work on-site, within view of the patients who need their help to find better ways of treating cancer. Patients also have the opportunity at the center to participate in trials that allow them to take advantage of treatments not available elsewhere.
Meet Your Team
At Loyola, experts such as surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, radiologists and pathologists all meet together to discuss your case. They review your laboratory results and other diagnostics and work closely together to come to a consensus regarding the best treatment for you and your specific situation. After your team has agreed on a solution that is right for you, they will each individually meet with you and your family that day to discuss each of their areas of expertise and approach to your care.
Through a combination of research, diagnostics, treatment, follow-up and imaging services, many of which are available under one roof, cancer patients receive a unique approach to cancer care not offered by other health-care providers. It is an approach that saves lives and offers hope for the future.
From Trials to Treatment
Loyola University Health System’s Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center has embraced a culture of translational research — a process that shortens the time from when medical discoveries are made in the research laboratory to when they are available at patients’ bedsides. This process allows for more collaboration between the scientists making the discoveries and the physicians treating the patients. Treatments can sometimes become more customized to a patient’s specific needs, while researchers receive feedback on treatment results faster than was possible before.
Translational research allows patients to receive treatments that are not yet available to the public or at other health-care institutions and offers hope for diseases such as cancer.
Related Article
Knowing Is Half the Battle
When it comes to cancer, awareness and early detection can mean the difference between life and death. Take this true/false quiz to check your cancer competence.
1. The risk of dying from cancer in the United States is increasing.
2. Regularly eating meat cooked on a charcoal grill can increase your risk for cancer.
3. Household bug spray can cause cancer.
4. Treating cancer with surgery causes it to spread throughout the body.
5. Living in a polluted city is a greater risk factor for lung cancer than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
Answers
1. False — The risk of a person in the United States dying from cancer has been decreasing steadily since the early 1990s.
2. True — Research shows grilling meat creates cancer-causing substances, especially if the meat is burnt.
3. False — Research does not suggest a link between household pesticides and cancer.
4. False — Surgeons know how to safely take biopsies and remove tumors without causing the spread of cancer.
5. False — Cigarette smoking is more dangerous than air pollution.
Source: American Cancer Society
To learn more about programs and services available at Loyola’s Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center, visit www.LoyolaMedicine.org/cancer or call (888) LUHS-888 to make an appointment with a Loyola physician. For your convenience, follow-up care can be provided at our Wheaton and Homer Glen locations.
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