A new sarcoma clinic has opened at Duke, allowing patients
to receive a multidisciplinary team approach to their care.
The clinic allows patients to make one visit to Duke to see
Brian
Brigman, MD, PhD, an orthopaedic surgeon; Rich Riedel, MD, a medical
oncologist; and radiation oncologists Nicole Larrier,
MD, or David
Kirsch, MD, PhD. The physicians meet with a patient during
his or her initial appointment, and then work together to
create the most effective treatment plan for the patient.
“Since most sarcoma patients require a combination of
treatments to treat their disease most effectively, this
multidisciplinary approach is an efficient way for patients to
talk to multiple doctors during one visit,” says Brigman.
Sarcoma is a term that describes approximately 50 different
types of soft tissue
cancer and seven types of bone cancer. Each year, 10,000
patients are diagnosed with all types of sarcomas, compared to
178,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer and 218,000 men
diagnosed with prostate cancer. Sarcoma is also one of the more
common cancers in children; about 20 percent of the sarcoma
patients treated at Duke are children.
According to Brigman, many community physicians are not
familiar with sarcoma. Many hospitals do not treat sarcoma
patients, and of those that do, even fewer offer a
multidisciplinary approach to care.
Although Duke physicians have been treating sarcoma patients
for many years, Riedel is the first medical oncologist at Duke
devoted exclusively to sarcoma. He joined the Duke faculty in
July 2007 as the recipient of the Maria Garcia-Estrada Career
Development Award in Sarcoma. Garcia-Estrada was a former Duke
golfer who was diagnosed with sarcoma in 2005, two years after
graduating, and died seven months later.
Jim Heinz, her mentor at Marquette Partners, helped to raise
$500,000 to recruit a faculty member to Duke to study sarcoma.
“This generous funding will allow for the further development
of our sarcoma research efforts as we work to improve
therapeutic options for our patients,” says Riedel.
