A great example of what personalized medicine could do!
Ilaria Stura from University of Turin has released an interview for MedicalResearch.com on the mathematical algorithm that has been developed to predict the recurrence of prostate cancer, helping clinicians to chose the best treatment for the patient.
"Man has always tried to predict the future, especially to prevent catastrophes, diseases and death. In this case, we want to prevent the āpersonal catastropheā, i.e. the spread of the disease (recurrence of prostate cancer) in the patient. Our work therefore belongs to the so-called āpersonalized medicineā, a very important and innovative clinical approach.
In particular this study may potentially improve the quality of life of the patients and help the clinicians, since it could give valuable information to the urologist, for example reporting that the growth velocity of the tumor is increasing and that a relapse is expected within few months. With this information, the clinician could chose the best therapy for the patient (e.g. hormone or radio therapy) in order to stop the spread of the disease or, conversely, the use of drugs can be delayed if not necessary.
Obviously clinicians already try to do this, based on their experience, but our method provides further confidence in their āinvestigationā work, since the algorithm is validated on data coming from a database much larger than his/her personal experience."
Read the full interview fromĀ MedicalResearch.com
