How to Research Side Effects

We get a lot of questions about how (or "whether") you can research side effects on the LATESTBreastCancer.com site. Not only can you research them, you can do so very thoroughly. No, it isn't as simple as typing "bone pain" into Google, but by using a more thoughtful approach, you'll end up with a more complete answer and you'll likely finish your research faster.

LATESTBreastCancer.com is organized by treatment options, so the key is to think of a side effect as being: 1) caused by a treatment option, and 2) addressed by a treatment option.

The side effects of a treatment option.
If you want to learn about the side effects associated with a treatment option (for example, "Herceptin") simply go to that treatment option page. You can find Herceptin under Drugs > Targeted Drugs, or you can enter Herceptin (or trastuzumab) in the search box. On the Herceptin page every high quality article that we have found over the past 2 years -- including every article about side effects -- is organized by type:

Descriptions: Get overviews of the side effects caused by Herceptin.

FDA Info: Check out Herceptin's FDA approved product label. It provides more detail about the types and frequencies of specific side effects.

News articles: Scan the articles to see if there is any new information about a side effect.

Medical journal abstracts: Scan the list for very recent, detailed information about side effects seen in specific patient populations or in specific treatment settings.

Within the Herceptin links, we include articles related to side effects caused by Herceptin as well as articles related to the treatment of side effects specifically caused by Herceptin.

Understanding your options for treating a side effect.
If you want to research how to address a side effect, every option is listed on the site. Go to Treatments and scan the lists of drugs and complementary therapies.

Drugs for side effects: Found in the Drugs section. Each drug summary states the side effect that the drug addresses. For example, EMEND: NAUSEA, and XGEVA: BONE-RELATED. This enables you to quickly scan the list.

Nutritional supplements: In addition to pharmaceuticals, some complementary therapies may address side effects for some women. We use the same convention of identifying the side effect at the beginning of each summary in capital letters: "Black cohosh: HOT FLASHES", "Ginger: NAUSEA."

Other complementary approaches: Other forms of complementary options might also be relevant to you. For example, under Mind Body Connection you'll find "Hypnosis: HOT FLASHES, PAIN", "Meditation: STRESS, ANXIETY." Under Manipulation and Touch you'll find "Acupuncture: NAUSEA."


In summary, with LATESTBreastCancer you can research side effects thoroughly, find the latest information quickly, and (unlike Google searching) easily identify options that you might not have known about.

Take Advantage of our Personalized "News and Journals" Search

When you're diagnosed with breast cancer, treatment decisions are made quickly. Even if you have great faith in your medical team, you likely want to be involved in these decisions. You want to ask good questions and interact with your medical team at the highest possible level.

The problem is that breast cancer treatment is complex. You know you're not going to have a lot of face-to-face time with your physicians and you want to take full advantage of that time. You want to ask questions that are timely, relevant and insightful.

Question: How can you compile the best possible set of questions relevant to your treatment at each phase of your treatment, from biopsy to surgery to chemotherapy and so on?

Answer: By taking advantage of our "News and Journals" search.

LATESTBreastCancer's News and Journals search is like having your own personal research assistant go through the most recent few years of news and journal articles about a specific aspect of treatment, identify the most important ones, and then organize them in a file folder for you.

To use the News and Journals search, you simply:

1) Select an aspect of treatment ("Procedures" or "Radiation & Chemotherapy"... example).

2) Decided whether you want to search News Articles or Medical Journals (you'll perform each of these searches separately).

3) Select a timeframe. Most likely you'll select "Past 2 years."

When you click Go, our software searches our complete database for the links that you need to see and organizes them in one place (example).

Congratulations! You just saved yourself days or weeks of effort searching for yourself online. More likely, you now have a list of links that you couldn't compile on your own regardless of the amount of time you spent.

Scan the list of links. Print it out if you like. Highlight the ones you want to research further. Not every link will be relevant to you. Your medical profile doesn't tell us everything about you. But it enables us to filter out an enormous amount of information that isn't relevant to your stage of cancer, age, receptor status, etc... The links you get using News and Journals enable you to formulate extremely relevant questions about your treatment based on all of the most current information.

Put simply, breast cancer patients have never had the ability to become so well-informed so easily.

Using LATESTBreastCancer's Treatment section as a subscriber

Yesterday I described the Treatment section of LATESTBreastCancer. In a nutshell, it's set up as lists of treatments organized into categories and subcategories. Today I'll describe the advantages of being a subscriber when you're navigating the Treatments section. Based on their medical profile, subscribers see a more organized and distilled view of the Treatments section compared to non-subscriber visitors.

Here are the subscriber advantages:

1. Treatments are personalized. Subscribers only view treatment options that are relevant to them. So, for example, a postmenopausal patient with a hormone receptor positive tumor will view a list of hormonal drugs that are appropriate for postmenopausal women. A patient whose tumor is hormone receptor negative will not see any hormonal drugs. A non-subscriber will see everything regardless of whether it is relevant to their diagnosis or not.

2. Relevant treatments are organized under tabs. Rather than seeing one long list, for subscribers drugs are organized under tabs corresponding to frequency of use. The first tab includes drugs most commonly used. The second tab includes drugs that are available because they are FDA approved, but which are less commonly used or are accessible through a clinical trial. The third tab includes drugs that are not yet FDA approved and so can only be accessed via a clinical trial. Subscribers take advantage of this "most common to least common" tabbing for other treatment options as well.

3. Links are personalized. Information filtering goes beyond treatment options. It also impacts the Web links a user sees on treatment pages. Using the previous example, there will be many news and medical journal article links on the pages for common hormonal drugs like tamoxifen or Arimidex. But a subscriber with early stage disease will only see information related to the use of these drugs for treating early stage. The objective is to focus the user on the information relevant to them.

Finally, we know that at times it's nice to see everything. So we enable subscribers to see everything with a click of a button. On any page in the Treatments section, to view everything click the All Options button. Go back to a personalized view by clicking My Options. It's that simple.

Bottom line: Subscribers get a personalized and more organized view of Treatments that points them in the right direction and eliminates the task of screening the information themselves.