“VeloSano is really important for the advancement of research in cancer,” says Tamara Sussman, MD. “Through doing this research and developing ideas, hopefully, we will be able to one day provide new treatments for patients with cancer.”
Co-Investigator
The very thing that is healing head and neck cancer patients may also be harming them. The best option for chemotherapy for these patients is cisplatin. At this time, cisplatin, given with radiation, is the best chance for curing head and neck cancer, but it may cause hearing loss. Many patients end up with tinnitus (ringing in the ears).
Tamara Sussman, MD, and Matthew Stewart, MD, are the team behind this study. They want to minimize long-term side effects and address this issue with patients in real time. The goal is to screen patients for hearing loss while they are in the exam room for their chemotherapy.
“We hope to have a screening tool in the office for patients to make it convenient and feasible for them to access when we think they’re having changes in hearing or if they are developing tinnitus,” says Dr. Sussman. “We want to be proactive and address this issue before it becomes a bigger problem and more debilitating as time goes on.”
When patients develop hearing issues, they start to have trouble with conversational speech, hearing their loved ones and listening to music. When these problems persist, their behavior changes.
“Patients start to retract and avoid social situations because they can’t hear as they once did,” says Dr. Stewart. “Over time, it can severely impact their quality of life. Additionally, they can even develop depression and early-onset dementia because of hearing loss.”
Their goal in assessing patients is to intervene earlier and, ultimately, improve survivorship after patients beat cancer. Capturing the data to show that this is a major problem for some patients can lead to a new standard of care management for head and neck cancer.
100% For The Cure
