By Noah Lloyd
A declaration of remission doesn’t mean a cancer patient’s illness is fully gone. Many cancer survivors face lingering symptoms that lead to both physical discomfort and mental strain.
Even though there are some commonalities, the symptoms themselves are highly variable between individuals and difficult to predict, says Marilyn Hammer, professor of nursing at Northeastern University.
Hammer is the principal investigator of new research that explored which symptoms cancer survivors experience, how often they experience them, how severe those conditions are, if there are trends in how they appear and which symptoms appear in clusters with other symptoms.
Though nurses have been performing symptom studies for decades, the presentation between individuals is so variable that understanding how the symptoms interrelate has been a massive challenge, Hammer says.
Hammer’s work focuses on precision medicine, where individual differences in people’s genes, environments and other lifestyles help guide individualized treatment. Her work on symptom clusters is part of the effort to continue creating “tailored interventions” for those with cancer, she says.
