This page contains links to featured articles that have been adapted from Fred Hutchinson publications as well as other items pertinent to long-term follow-up patients.
Anniversary visit key to good health
At the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, patients who undergo bone-marrow and peripheral blood stem-cell transplants are asked to return for a comprehensive evaluation after one year.
Making the most out of SCCA's services
One avenue open to LTFU participants under the Survivorship Program at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance is participation in the Medical Oncology Survivorship Team clinic, better known as the MOST Clinic. To LTFU participants, the MOST Clinic should be seen as a supplemental service that's available to them. It simply offers another way to help them lead healthy lives.
Helping transplant patients breathe easier
Every minute of every day, lungs provide oxygen needed for survival, and they often do so elegantly unnoticed. Hundreds of millions of tiny air sacs fill and empty tens of thousands of times per day in a healthy pair of lungs. Despite working around the clock, lungs are delicate. If the entire surface area of adult lungs were spread out, it would cover a tennis court, and all of that area is routinely exposed to the environment. When you consider that the only other organ that shares that exposure level is the relatively hardy skin, it's understandable why lungs are especially sensitive to change.
Controlling gastrointestinal GVHD
Anyone who has had an allogeneic stem-cell transplant knows the potential problems that can come with it. About 60 percent of patients who receive such a transplant develop gastrointestinal GVHD after being infused with donor stem cells. But Hutchinson Center researchers have made strides against GVHD and recently found that adding a widely used drug to the standard regimen can help keep the disease in remission.
Lifetime of Monitoring
Surviving childhood cancer is not the end of the battle. As Hutchinson Center researchers have long known, the risk of a second cancer or other chronic illness is a threat that looms into adulthood. For thirty years, the Center has been following patients in efforts to ensure that those patients receive quality medical care after leaving the Center.
LTFU looking for answers in aging
Cancer survivors often experience symptoms that make them feel older than their age. Patients frequently report symptoms of muscle and joint stiffness, weakness or discomfort, and they tire faster than their contemporaries. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center researchers Drs. Karen Syrjala and Janet Abrams have been listening to those concerns, and are now taking action.
LTFU leading the way
For transplant patients and their care providers, some of the most important things that determine the success or failure of therapy come months or even a few years after the last bag of stem cells has been infused. Complications of stem–cell transplants are a fact of life for many patients and not just in the first three months after the transplant, once thought to be the most critical time.
Patient recognition wall celebrates you
Walk down the main hallway of the Thomas Building at the Hutchinson Center and along one wall you will pass displays celebrating Nobel laureates, corporate donors and special-event fund-raisers. There's the requisite mission statement and institutional description, even a donated Rodin sculpture.
Life 10 years later
Survivors of stem-cell transplantation for blood cancers can expect to be nearly as healthy 10 years later as adults who have never had a transplant, according to a recent Hutchinson Center study.
Breakthrough for ALL babies
Dr. Jean Sanders has treated children with cancer for 30 years, long enough to know a success story when she sees it. She also knows that it takes awhile to change people's minds about what works.
Nothing small about 'mini-transplants'
It's called a "mini-transplant" but there's nothing diminutive about this innovative and lifesaving therapy. First developed at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 1997, the mini-transplant is offering new hope for older patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other serious blood diseases — a population that is often medically unfit to withstand the rigors of a conventional blood (hematopoietic) stem-cell transplant. And, the therapy shows promise for treating some solid tumor cancers.
A second chance for children
A second transplant can offer a cure for some children with an aggressive form of leukemia whose cancer returns after their first stem-cell transplant, according to a recent Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center study.
Berg, Barbara. Adapted from an article in Center News, internal Fred Hutchinson publication (Jan. 22, 2004).
Temporary setbacks
New study shows decline in mental, physical skills after transplantation are largely reversed within one year.
Forbes, Dean. Adapted from an article in Center News, internal Fred Hutchinson internal publication (Oct. 21, 2004).
New thinking about GVHD
A fresh look at an old problem often yields new solutions. Scientists are finding this philosophy holds true for their efforts to combat graft-vs.-host disease (AZ).
Berg, Barbara. Adapted from an article in Center News, internal Fred Hutchinson internal publication (Aug. 19, 2004).
Approaching 'normal'
After a months-long stay in Seattle for a bone-marrow or stem-cell transplant, most patients long for the day that they will head home to a "normal" life, free of daily clinic visits, pills and blood tests. Yet even when treatment is successful, re-entry into former routines and family life can leave some transplant survivors questioning just what a normal life really means.
Berg, Barbara. Adapted from an article in Center News, internal Fred Hutchinson internal publication (May 6, 2004).
Normal life, 20-30 years later
Transplant patients' newly developed immune systems can function well, says study of world's longest survivors.
Edmonds, Susan. Adapted from an article in Center News, internal Fred Hutchinson internal publication (Jan. 3, 2002).
