The Multidisciplinary Appointment Makes Care Better for Patients
| Our head and neck specialists (l to r) Drs. Ghassan J. Samara and Lukasz Czerwonka with nurse navigator Gerty Fortune. (Click photo to enlarge.) |
Stony Brook Cancer Center has used the team approach for many years. Specialists from different areas — surgery, medical oncology, radiation oncology, and nursing — work closely together as a team to evaluate the best course of treatment for each individual patient.
Ghassan J. Samara, MD, associate professor of surgery and leader of the head and neck, thyroid oncology team, explains that for new patients who have been diagnosed with a head and neck cancer, a multidisciplinary appointment is set up so that these patients can see all of their specialists at the same location on the same day in one single visit.
Keeping the patient's needs and convenience in mind, our nurse navigator Gerty Fortune, RN, coordinates appointments so the patient can be seen by different specialists on the team in one block of time.
Patients can hear from all the specialists involved with their treatment and receive
all of the information about it at once.
On the appointment day, one specialist — for example, the surgeon — may explain the specifics of the procedure he will provide, and be followed by another — for example, the radiation oncologist — who will discuss that treatment approach.
In some cases, two different specialists may meet with the patient together to explain how their treatments will be coordinated.
This collaboration is particularly important in head and neck cancers because they may require consideration of complex factors to be handled at the same time, such as dental, swallowing, speech, cosmetic, and other specialized areas of treatment.
The quality-of-life benefits to patients make the multidisciplinary appointment better for them.
The multidisciplinary appointment model used by our head and neck cancer team will serve as the care model for all Stony Brook Cancer Center's teams in the near future.
Cancers of the head and neck region are diagnosed and treated by our specialized multidisciplinary team of surgeons, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, endocrinologists, pathologists, radiologists, and speech-language pathologists. Our team's focus is on malignancies of:
- Thyroid and parathyroid glands
- Salivary glands
- Aerodigestive tract, including:
- Hypopharynx
- Larynx
- Nasal cavity
- Oral cavity (mouth)
- Oropharynx (tonsil and tongue base)
- Sinuses
- Skull base
The Stony Brook Cancer Center is the only center in Suffolk County that offers patients a multidisciplinary appointment, which not only allows them the opportunity to hear from multiple specialists in one day, but allows our team to quickly establish a treatment plan and act on it.
| Given the complexities of multimodality treatment for patients with head and neck cancer, the rationale for the use of multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) to define individual optimal treatment strategies on a per-patient basis is apparent. Increased use of guideline-directed approaches, reduced time to treatment and improved outcomes, which result from use of an MDT approach in head and neck cancer, have been documented. — "Evaluation of the Benefit and Use of Multidisciplinary Teams in the Treatment of Head and Neck Cancer," Oral Oncology (2016) |
For consultations/appointments with our head and neck specialists, please call 631-444-4121.
