OA: Cancer-associated thrombosis and palliative care: an interview with Simon Noble

Cancer-associated thrombosis and palliative care: an interview with Simon Noble, Future Oncology, Future Medicine

 Q CAT is a condition that is not normally discussed, despite it being one of the leading causes of death in cancer patients. Can you tell our readers more about the condition & the risk factors involved?

 Another thing that is very important to note is that 52% of people that get CAT will do so in the first 3 months of diagnosis of cancer. So you have people who are still reeling from their diagnosis of a life-threatening condition and then usually within 3 months of that, usually as they have just started their treatment for it, they will then have another life-threatening condition that is either a deep vein thrombosis or a pulmonary embolus; so the psychological impact of that cannot be underestimated.

...Interestingly, we have done some other research in noncancer patients, which shows that patients who have experienced a clot will develop ongoing anxiety and distress, and proportion of them will develop post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the reasons that triggers post-traumatic stress disorder is an unexpected threat to life and then living with the unknowing of whether that threat is likely to return so it is that uncertainty which causes a lot of the distress....

Q Can you tell our readers about your current research & other ongoing studies?

First of all I am continuing the PELICAN study. We have analyzed data from Spain, which we are writing up at the moment and we are also analyzing data from Canada. We have still got data from France coming in and we have opened recently in New Zealand. We have also got other countries that are opening such as Manila, Singapore and also The Netherlands. We have now got quite a few countries still going so that will be very interesting.....
 (Patient Experience of LIving with CANcer associated thrombosis)