The Davidoff Comprehensive Cancer Center, Israel’s only cancer hospital, has recently opened an Adolescent & Young Adult Cancer Clinic to help patients going through treatment between the ages of 18-44. The Davidoff Comprehensive Cancer Center is part of Beilinson Hospital, one of Israel’s largest medical centers.
Adolescents and young adults going through cancer treatment have unique challenges as they go through their treatment journey, which is different from pediatric patients and older adults.
Some of the most common concerns include intimacy while in treatment and infertility caused by chemotherapy. Patients with children worry if the disease is genetic and how their illness will affect their children. Single patients worry most about how their cancer diagnosis will impact future relationships, in finding a spouse and when to tell a significant other. Patients who are still students have questions about how to continue with their degree while needing to take time off for treatment and not wanting to fall behind.
Through a grant from Halasartan (Stop Cancer), the Davidoff Comprehensive Cancer Center launched its Adolescents & Young Adult Cancer Clinic to help patients in this demographic navigate their experience from the time of diagnosis to help them plan for life after remission.
The Davidoff Comprehensive Cancer Center is the first cancer hospital in Israel, dedicated to cancer prevention, treatment and research. It treats one in every seven patients in Israel who are diagnosed each year with any type of solid or hematological cancer. In Israel, 10 young adults receive a cancer diagnosis each day and at the Davidoff Comprehensive Cancer Center, nearly 10-percent of its patients are adolescents and young adults. Each month, 30-50 young adult patients join the clinic. The clinic’s goal is to help these patients live the rest of their lives to the fullest and without the trauma of their diagnosis holding them back.
The clinic also focuses on socially connecting patients to combat the feeling of loneliness when going through treatment. It has started a WhatsApp group for the patients (with 80 current members and on average, five new patients joining weekly), to create a sense of community. They have started launching in-person and virtual social activities such as art therapy and will soon be launching a virtual physical activity group.
“Adolescents and young adult patients have their own unique concerns which require a specially dedicated team to address their needs matched to where they are in their lives,” said Prof. Gal Markel, the head of Beilinson’s Davidoff Comprehensive Cancer Center and chairman of the Samueli Integrative Cancer Pioneering Institute. “We are constantly looking to provide the best integrative care possible to address what matters to our patients and we are very excited about the launch of our clinic and are already seeing the positive impact it is having on our patients”.
Caroline Haïat
Commenti