Palliative Care with Dr. Ishwaria Subbiah

05/08/21 • 43 min

Dr. Ishwaria Subbiah is a palliative care physician and medical oncologist in the Division of Cancer Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. She is uniquely qualified for this role, having completed training at MD Anderson, not only in medical oncology but also in Phase 1 drug development and Palliative Medicine. With all this training she sees patients in the palliative care clinic and also conducts clinical research that focuses on symptom management and patient centered supportive care that is driven by patient-reported outcomes (PROs) with an emphasis on older adult participation on clinical trials. She also works on developing palliative care initiatives and PROs on the national and international level.

You can find Dr. Subbiah on social media including twitter where she is very active. In this episode we discuss defining palliative care what interested Dr. Subbiah in palliative care the difference between palliative care and hospice care benefits of palliative care why palliative care is critical to cancer care breadth of palliative care team caregiver experience the future of palliative care

Image credit National Cancer Institute

Music Rospigg

Image credit National Cancer Institute

Music Rospigg

Previous Episode

Sarcoma Clinical Trials with Dr. Breelyn Wilky

Dr. Wilky is the Director of Sarcoma Medical Oncology at the University of Colorado. She cares for patients over the age of 18 with every type of sarcoma and is an expert not only in traditional chemotherapy treatments for sarcomas, but also at using modern technology such as gene sequencing and molecular profiling to identify out-of-the-box treatments particularly in targeted therapy. Dr. Wilky is also a translational researcher who conducts and designs clinical trials for sarcoma patients, with a focus on early immunotherapy protocols. Her laboratory studies the interaction between sarcomas and the immune system. Additionally, Dr. Wilky leads the investigator-initiated clinical trials committee at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, helping other researchers bring laboratory science discoveries into human clinical trials

You can get so much great information about sarcoma and treatments by following Dr. Wilky on social media on Twitter or on her blog

In this episode we discuss:

How are clinical trials used in medicine
The hope of clinical trials
Phase 1 clinical trials
Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials
Learning from all patients enrolled on clinical trials
Big data and sarcoma
Immunotherapy and sarcoma
Compassionate use and right to try
What are the most important questions you should ask your doctor when considering a clinical trial

music: Rospigg

photo credit: volodymyr-hrysh

Next Episode

Ewing Sarcoma Phase 3 Clinical Trial - Discussing The Results

Dr. Allen-Rhoades and Dr. Kopp discuss the results of the recently published Ewing Sarcoma clinical trial - Phase III Trial Adding Vincristine-Topotecan-Cyclophosphamide to the Initial Treatment of Patients With Nonmetastatic Ewing Sarcoma: A Children's Oncology Group Report.

We mention in the episode that the full article is accessible, however, it is only if you purchase individually - bummer. However, the link Is here for the article abstract and if you would like to purchase.

We discuss the clinical trial in detail including background on previous trials, methods, results and how these results affect current and future treatment of patients with Ewing sarcoma. Thank you for listening and please let us know your thoughts!