Editor's Note
	Is NHL complicated or am I stupid?

After listening to the final edit of this audio program, other than the fact that all three interviewees say the phrase “R-CHOP” a lot, it seemed at times like they were talking about three different chapters in a 900-page Russian novel.

The encyclopedic nature of this disease is very evident in the diversity of topics discussed here. Rick Hagemeister rattles off obscure journal citations and treatment acronyms; Stephanie Gregory talks about the need for clinicians to be more aware of the biologically fascinating phenomenon of disease transformation in patients with follicular lymphoma; and finally, David Maloney discusses the extraordinary treatment strategy of nonmyeloablative allogeneic transplantation and the challenges of graft-versus-host disease. After 16 years of developing CME programs on breast cancer, Toto now knows we’re not in “solid-tumor land” anymore.

The complexities of NHL are such that Sandra Horning — the first brave soul to participate in this educational experiment — joked after our interview that some “NHL’ers” view the breast cancer clinical and basic research database as somewhat primitive and simple compared to NHL. When I mentioned this comment to our longtime breast cancer colleague Bob Carlson (whose office was next to Sandra’s at Stanford for many years), he said, “NHL is easy…R-CHOP, R-CHOP, R-CHOP.”

God bless our patients who are also hoping to gain some insight into their illness. Dr Hagemeister commented during his interview that chat rooms and advocacy groups are now available for patients with mantle-cell lymphoma, and we urgently need to improve education for patients with every variation of this complex disease. I would like to query our loyal listening audience about an idea in this regard: Do you believe some type of audio program similar to this one would be useful for patients?

I understand that we must protect patients from using this type of program as a prescription for their own therapy, but if research leader interviewees explained the disease and its treatment in the same easy-to-understand manner they utilize when speaking to their own patients, I imagine it could be extremely beneficial and enlightening, and it might enhance what patients are already learning from their own physicians. Furthermore, this type of audio program could include the perspectives and experiences of patients and oncology nurses.

Our audio programs are successful, in part, because they enable busy physicians to multitask by listening while they exercise or commute in their cars. I believe many patients are also very busy and might benefit from this educational strategy. My fantasy is to distribute an audio series via oncologists who might recommend it to appropriately selected patients. I also envision the audio files being available over the Internet for downloading, and perhaps grandchildren of patients burning CDs for those who are not web-savvy.

Kindly forward your thoughts and comments about this concept, which may focus on any aspect of oncology, although the complexities of NHL appear to be an excellent starting point for this type of educational experiment.

— Neil Love, MD
NLove@ResearchToPractice.net

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