Oncology Follow Up

This is a particularly controversial area of clinical medicine. While every patient desires close followup, the insurers and those engaged in the field of “evidence-based-medicine” point to the lack of survival benefit associated with the close monitoring of tumor markers and other harbingers of early relapse. It is indeed a dilemma, as both physicians and patients are comforted by negative workups and regular followups. It may, in the future, become necessary for patients to assume the costs of their followup visits after an adequate period of time has elapsed. As a rule, for most solid tumors, three years of followup with NED and certainly 5 years of followup with NED, is considered adequate. Despite this, some tumors, among them, ER+ breast cancers can manifest late relapses. This is a particularly controversial area of clinical medicine. While every patient desires close followup, the insurers and those engaged in the field of “evidence-based-medicine” point to the lack of survival benefit associated with the close monitoring of tumor markers and other harbingers of early relapse. It is indeed a dilemma, as both physicians and patients are comforted by negative workups and regular followups. It may, in the future, become necessary for patients to assume the costs of their followup visits after an adequate period of time has elapsed. As a rule, for most solid tumors, three years of followup with NED and certainly 5 years of followup with NED, is considered adequate. Despite this, some tumors, among them, ER+ breast cancers can manifest late relapses.