Women's Cancer Care Has Come a Long Way on the East End, Express News Group Session Reports

Doctors from some of the region’s medical networks offered a promising diagnosis of the state and future of treatment for women on the East End who are diagnosed with cancers at the first in a new series of discussions about the changing face of health care in the region, hosted by The Express News Group.

The conversation, “The Innovations in the Fight Against Women’s Cancers,” was held via Zoom on Thursday, October 6. It was moderated by Executive Editor Joseph P. Shaw.

The region has evolved from an underserved and disconnected outpost to one that has growing resources and expertise at its disposal, the doctors said. The East End has seen a major shift in services in the last two decades, in terms of bridging geographic isolation, the power to tap broad networks of experts to offer the most advanced treatment, offering more facilities locally, and general advances in understanding and treating cancers.

Better testing, advances in the understanding of myriad cancer mutations, individualized treatments and genetic research have made doctors better at treating cancers in general, and the resources of medical networks like Stony Brook Medicine, Northwell Health and NYU Langone, which have all established locally, give those seeking treatment locally the ability to tap the understanding and knowledge of thousands of doctors.

But foremost in the battle, has been the establishment of advance treatment and care centers directly on the South Fork.

“When I did radiation 25 years ago, I lived in Water Mill, and I had to go either to Stony Brook Hospital or then to Brookhaven, five days a week, for eight weeks — that took a lot out of me,” recalled Susie Roden, president of the Coalition for Women’s Cancers and a founder of the South Fork Breast Health Coalition, and herself a cancer survivor. “This time around, all I had to do was go to Southampton. It made a world of difference.”

With the opening of Stony Brook Medicine and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Phillips Cancer Center in Southampton last year, the ability to get treatment for a variety of cancers without traveling to clinics to the west — and the logistical hurdles that presents in finding transportation from family and friends — has bridged a substantial gap for those in Long Island’s easternmost towns.

And the arrival of major networks means that New York City is no longer the only option for access to top doctors.

“I live on the North Fork, and I saw patients having to go west for the latest treatments,” said Dr. Susan Lee, chief of breast surgery at Peconic Bay Medical Center. “When I took on the position here, I said, ‘Put me out east.”

The reach of the Northwell Health network means that doctors at PBMC are now connected directly to the latest understanding of the medical community across the expanse of the network’s reach. “We’re discussing the latest innovations, the latest clinical trials” on the East End, Lee added.

The Phillips Cancer Center in Southampton has a full-time oncologist on staff and is adding a second soon, said Dr. Jules Cohen, an oncologist at Stony Brook Cancer Center. Additionally the network will rotate sub specialists through the center on a regular basis to make highly specialized care from those leading the field available to East End residents just a short drive from home.

And when patients walk through the doors of the various new offices in the region, they will be able to benefit from a growing series of advancements in the treatment of cancers that have made addressing each patient’s illness more effective and less invasive and debilitating.

“If you look at breast cancer itself, because of screening and innovations in treatments, the mortality rate has decreased significantly,” Lee said. “Breast cancer used to be very cookie-cutter — everybody got the same treatment. But now we’re individualizing the treatment of cancers … we are able to help patients live longer. Because of screening, we’re finding cancers earlier, and the earlier you find cancer, the better chance of living longer.”

Doctors are getting steadily better at “individualizing” cancers, Dr. Frances Arena, an oncologist with NYU Langone, said, because of research that is revealing deeper and deeper understanding of how cancers can vary in each patient.

“We’re unraveling an onion … trying to figure out what is real and giving therapies that are really targeted and pertinent for that individual patient,” Arena said. “When I started out, there were only a handful of therapies and less than six or seven different chemotherapies. Now, we have much more than that. We can look at patients individually and understand that breast cancer is not the same for everybody. Patients now have choices.”

Cohen said that the focus of doctors working on innovations in treatment is now focusing on reducing the intensity of therapies to lessen the side effects and toxicity of cancer treatments — fewer mastectomies, fewer surgeries and fewer radiation treatments. What used to be an eight-week standard for daily radiation therapy is now often only four. Better understandings of molecular profiles and gene sequence research have given doctors a much better understanding of which patients and which cancers may need aggressive treatments and which likely will not.

And the network of care for East End cancer sufferers goes well beyond the purely medical, Roden said. There is now a well-established support network for women with cancer.

“Thirty years ago, there was nothing available — we didn’t even have a breast surgeon — and so many women were not talking about their experience. It was almost embarrassing that you had breast cancer,” she recalled of her first bout with breast cancer, which spurred her to start the South Fork Breast Health Coalition. “Now, most of our survivors are very proud of what they have gone through and how they came out on the other end. Our theme is ‘You are not alone.’”