Key points from today’s guests:

Allison Lackey, breast cancer survivor

• Allison received a notice that her test results showed she had triple negative breast cancer.
• Blindsided by the electronic notice, she looked to get a second opinion from The University of Kansas Cancer Center.
• Before she even had her first appointment, she received a hand-delivered personalized packet from them outlining who her doctors would be and what the process was going to be like.
• After new lab results came in, it turns out Allison was misdiagnosed and needed a different treatment, which included a lumpectomy and 15 rounds of radiation therapy.
• She is happy and healthy today and recommends getting a second opinion if you are not confident in your original diagnosis.

Dr. Anne O’Dea, medical director, breast cancer survivorship, The University of Kansas Cancer Center

• Sometimes these cancers are sort of like a bowl of trail mix – there's peanuts and raisins and M&Ms, and some cancers are 99 percent peanuts and only 1 percent occasional raisin or M&Ms. And if you don't have a pathologist that's used to looking for that one isolated cell, you're going to miss that.
• The treatment that we're going to recommend is only as good as the accuracy as what the radiologist tells us.
• We always tell our patients that the most important doctor on your team is the one doctor you usually never meet – the pathologist.
• If we had not known about her specific type of cancer, we would not have been able to offer her a medication that would improve her survival by 50 percent. So it's critically important to have the correct diagnosis.

Dr. Jamie Wagner, division director, breast surgical oncology, The University of Kansas Cancer Center

• The interesting thing that we have seen through some studies is that approximately 33 percent of the time when a breast-specific pathologist takes a second look at the original pathology, they will find a different histology.
• And 25 percent of the time the prognostic markers change – the personality type of the breast cancer. That's exactly what happened with Allison so we went from a false triple negative cancer diagnosis to a hormone positive cancer diagnosis, which is a dramatic change in how to treat her.
• Get a second opinion because the data also shows us that 43 percent of the time with breast cancer specifically, the diagnosis will change by getting that second opinion at an NCI designated cancer center.
• As a result, if we change the diagnosis, everything changes about treatment.

Dr. Jasmeet Assi, breast pathologist, The University of Kansas Cancer Center

• The pathologists here are very specialized, so we are trained to look for specific areas versus general pathologists.
• Because we specialize and look at complex cases, we notice subtle changes and differences that general pathologists may not be able to see.
• In the synoptic report, we usually highlight the all the main characteristics of the tumor, whether it be the margins, how far they are from the margins, the size of the tumor, the grade of the tumor, if there's a lymph node spread.
• This information is quite important for the patient so the patient knows more about their own cancer as well as the team to proceed with how to treat the patient.

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control, The University of Kansas Health System

• The hospital COVID count for this week is down slightly to 21 inpatients.
• The hepatitis A virus had been detected in Lawrence wastewater, leading to KDHE to issue a health alert and recommend vaccinations for at-risk communities.
• Hepatitis A outbreaks do occur randomly throughout the country and throughout the world. They usually they can flare up, but it is important to remember we have a very good, safe preventive measure for this infection – vaccination.
• There is a measles outbreak in a Florida elementary school. Measles is very contagious and is probably the most contagious vaccine preventable disease that there is.
• Measles can be quite severe. One in five kids can go to the hospital for various reasons. One in 20 kids can get pneumonia and, unfortunately, one in 1000 kids can get a serious central nervous system infection or side effect with that infection.

Wednesday, July 10 at 8 a.m. is the next Open Mics with Dr. Stites. As all eyes turn to Paris and the Summer Olympics, we explore expert care for elite athletes. You’ll meet the gold medal Olympians who chose The University of Kansas Health System to keep them healthy.

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