Cancer is daunting for both patients and for clinical teams. Dr John McGrane and Dr Michael Rowe are oncologists who want to break down the complex parts of cancer care into clear and simple sessions.
We will dive deep into the world of cancer research, patient stories and the latest cancer breakthroughs. Simply Oncology will have patient focused episodes along with episodes that allow anyone with an interest in oncology to stay up to date. We hope you join us as we unpick all parts of cancer.
Oncology clinicians and educators get a practical framework for explaining treatment benefit, recurrence and toxicity. It prioritises absolute risk, natural frequencies, common denominators, visual aids and teach-back while keeping frailty, competing mortality, quality of life and patient goals within shared decision-making.
For neuro-oncology teams, glioblastoma gene therapy brings tumour heterogeneity into trial conversations. This links TGX-007, ADePT, convection-enhanced delivery, tissue endpoints and early phase safety monitoring without assuming that striking mouse survival results translate directly to humans.
Pancreatic radiotherapy decisions need selection, local-control goals and toxicity planning made explicit. SABR and adaptive image guidance sit close to stomach, duodenum, bowel and vasculature, so pain, nausea, bleeding, perforation, diabetes and malabsorption require planned review.
Pancreatic cancer radiotherapy is presented as palliation, consolidation after systemic therapy, neoadjuvant treatment in selected borderline resectable disease and possible oligometastatic control. The clinical decision is selection: metastatic status, chemotherapy response, luminal gastrointestinal invasion, nutritional burden and realistic treatment goals.
Metastatic renal cell carcinoma is told through a patient-centred lens here. Pick this for immunotherapy conversations, ipilimumab–nivolumab response, nephrectomy when a kidney tumour continues bleeding, surveillance uncertainty and how valued activities can shape shared decision-making.
Adjuvant kidney cancer treatment is for patients who may already be disease-free, so uncertainty matters. The discussion separates recurrence risk, disease-free survival, overall survival uncertainty, relapse timing after pembrolizumab and belzutifan toxicity, especially anaemia and hypoxia.
Adjuvant kidney cancer decisions need recurrence risk made visible. Use stage, grade, nodal status and recurrence-risk score before offering pembrolizumab, and state the uncertainty for non-clear cell disease rather than stretching clear cell trial data.
Stage III melanoma decisions are harder than simply offering everyone adjuvant treatment. This oncology review is best for the trade-off between BRAF and MEK toxicity and immunotherapy toxicity, and for understanding why palpable nodal disease matters when neoadjuvant treatment enters the conversation.
The oncology item is more specialist, but it gives a clinic checklist: request mismatch repair or MSI, HER2 and PD-L1 early, use CPS and TPS for squamous disease, and treat nutrition as part of metastatic oesophago-gastric cancer care.
A changing mole or a new pigmented lesion matters here because the excision report drives almost every next step. Breslow thickness, ulceration, and nodal staging decide whether wider excision, sentinel lymph node biopsy, follow-up intensity, or adjuvant PD-1 treatment enter the conversation.
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