City of Hope Report

Greg had arranged for the City of Hope to review Steve's records at their scheduled tumor board meeting on Friday, December 9.  Here is what he e-mailed Terry with a copy to me:

City of Hope had their Tumor Board meeting a day early and I received a call this evening. Here is the information.

1)      The rate of growth of the rumor is concerning. They want you to get a new MRI ASAP to verify the growth rate.

2)      The tumor is in a position to be operable and they recommend to resect (remove) the tumor quickly (but see #7 below)

3)      CoH upcoming research program will be too late starting for Steve to participate – he needs to start treatment quickly.

4)      CoH treatment plan is surgery followed by radiation + chemo. Survival rates given were typical of the articles we have been reading, with a wide variation based on their actual patients: 3 years to “still going strong”.

5)      CoH only takes Aetna PPO, not HMO option.

6)      CoH does not seem to offer anything of special benefit for Steve.

7)      They do recommend UCLA’s “newly diagnosed vaccine research program”.

a.       They say that Kaiser has a contract with UCLA for this research program and can put Steve in the program

b.      Dr. Greene is the coordinator between Kaiser and UCLA (according to CoH).

c.       If this is the case, he cannot get surgery except from a UCLA research surgeon

                                                               i.      Because a vaccine is individually made from the removed tumor

d.      When CoH research program gets started early next year, they will be working on the same vaccine approach.

Looks like the appointment with Dr. Greene next week becomes the priority discussion. Can we call Kaiser to verify their relationship with the UCLA research program?

 Many thanks to Greg for working on this. It seems that getting Steve in to UCLA is the next  step. Greg already has Steve scheduled for a consultation next Wednesday  on a private pay basis (I believe it is $700). My question is why hasn't Kaiser initiated this? Terry asked for a second opinion  with City of Hope or UCLA the evening of the biopsy on December 2nd and Dr. Sanchez said he would have to check with his boss to refer out of Kaiser. I saw a  Kaiser reference on the UCLA website so I'm sure there is an affiliation somehow. Why has nothing happened? Do you feel the urgency in the wording from the e-mail above? Days matter.