Patient Power Portland Town Hall

I had the opportunity to conduct a "CLL Town Hall" up in Portland this last weekend with Patient Power. We had about 150 patients and caregivers attend as well as another several hundred online for the live telecast. Here are the videos of our discussions.

 I was joined by Drs. Michael Keating from MD Anderson, Stephen Spurgeon from OHSU, and Kate Kolibaba from Compass Oncology in Portland / Vancouver.  We really covered the CLL landscape from both provider and patient perspectives. Each session is about an hour and a half. I hope that you can find some useful nuggets in here.


 Thanks for watching, Jeff Sharman -

The second video started out with some patient perspective and then transitioned to some of our commentary.


 

Seeing patients in Corvallis and points north

Dear Friends,

Blogging has become a hobby which my life has prevented me from accomplishing recently.  The good news is that I've been publishing a ton in CLL and NHL and keep working with our pharma partners to bring new therapies to patients with these diseases - the bad news is that life has gotten too busy to keep up the blogging which I really enjoy doing.

None the less, I am still trying to move the needle forward in CLL/NHL research and there are so many cool things going on, it is hard to inventory them all in one place.

I wanted to briefly post here to let you know that I am now seeing patients in Corvallis Oregon two days per month (second and fourth Thursday).  While I already have a pretty substantial population of patients who come to my clinic from Lynn/Benton and Multnomah counties, I am now a lot closer to you all.  For patients from these areas or other points north, I am happy to see you there instead of having you come all the way to Eugene.

If you would like to be seen, call my clinic 541-683-5001 and ask about being seen in Corvallis.

Secondly, I am participating in an upcoming "Town Hall" event with Patient Power on Sept 23 in Portland.  Info for the free event linked here (Sept 23 in Portland)

Sincerely,
Jeff Sharman

Supplement Fraud

Many of you who have followed my blog for a long time are aware of my concerns about supplements.  I have a lengthy blog post about the topic linked here.

Now comes word from the FDA cracking down on 14 manufacturers of 65 products for making false claims of efficacy in treating cancer.

Here is a link to the press release.

Here is a list of the specific supplements under investigation

Frontline investigations did a spectacular one hour documentary on the supplement industry.  I have a personal policy in my practice that I will not review supplements until patients have seen the video.  If you are taking supplements - this one hour video is a "must watch"

Video link here

I am pleased to see some regulatory focus on this topic.  While there will be hucksters out there who claim it is all a conspiracy, I am hopeful that the level headed individuals out there will find this eye opening and alarming.  They also have a link to an article which offers good clues that any particular "anti-cancer" supplement is fraudulent.  Link here

Thanks for reading.

Research Plug!

Hey there everyone,

Hope is a super powerful medicine - for both patients and their doctors.  I am an advocate of clinical trials because in the 9 years I've been at WVCI - I've seen firsthand how research changes lives and the diseases we have been treating.  I've had the blessing to be involved with ibrutinib, idelalisib, obinutuzumab since the very beginning and many more drugs - some of which we will be routinely using soon.

My research group put together this video and it packs a punch in 3 minutes.  I hope you are all energized to go out there and talk to your providers about research options that might be right for you.

Thanks for watching

Selecting Therapy in CLL

The CLL landscape continues to change very quickly.  I have previously written about picking a first line therapy, but my post from 2013 has become quickly outdated.

I recently had the opportunity to participate with a group called "Clinical Care Options" on a decision support tool that allows you to plug in a variety of variables that are central to picking out a treatment regimen and then seeing what therapy would be selected by a handful of experts.

To use the tool, you have to register for an account - but I thought it would be worth it for a number of patients who are at the point of picking out a particular therapy.

Here is a link to the tool

I also serve on the CLL Steering Committee for Medscape.  We have recently conducted several taped interviews discussing how to pick therapy in both the front line and relapsed / refractory setting.  Here again, you need to sign up for an account - but worth it if you want more color commentary regarding the tool outlined above.

Here is the link for the frontline video with me and Steve Coutre

Here is the link for the the relapsed / refractory video with Stephen Schuster, Matthew Davids and Amy Goodrich

I would like to predict that these will remain relevant tools for the foreseeable future but I am happy to report that they will only be valuable for another 12-24 months before the world changes again.

I tried to embed these tools directly on the blog but unfortunately was not able to do so.  I hope you find them helpful.

Thanks for reading / viewing / tooling.