Opinion
Video
Dr. Cary details the history of IU’s testicular cancer program
Author(s):
“Fortunately, the chemotherapy regimens that Dr. Einhorn put together in combination with the surgical approaches with Dr. Donohue really revolutionized the cure rates and the care for men with testicular cancer,” says Clint Cary, MD, MPH, MBA.
In this interview, Clint Cary, MD, MPH, MBA, describes the history of Indiana University’s testicular cancer program. Cary is an associate professor of urology and the director of the germ cell tumor program at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis.
Video Transcript:
It's hard to talk about the program without giving a little bit of the historical background of it. So, [Dr.] John Donohue was a previous chairman here, and he really, in the 60s, began pioneering the surgical approach for metastatic testicular cancer. As he was doing this, there really was no chemotherapeutic option for the disease, so he was offering men, at the time, one of the highest cure rates just by surgery alone for metastatic cancer. That grew our volume here as patients came to see him and seek the potential for cure. Then once Dr. [Lawrence] Larry Einhorn came on staff in the medical oncology space and had ideas about some chemotherapy options, they partnered and really set the standard for multidisciplinary care for oncology. Fortunately, the chemotherapy regimens that Dr. Einhorn put together in combination with the surgical approaches with Dr. Donohue really revolutionized the cure rates and the care for men with testicular cancer. That carried the 60s, 70s, and 80s [and] really revolutionized the care for those men.
We've been fortunate to continue that legacy through the last 50 years. That continues to be the program today. It's a big multidisciplinary effort. We work very closely with medical oncology. Still, we are, from a clinical volume standpoint, one of the largest, if not the largest, surgical programs for retroperitoneal lymph node dissection in the world. Patients come to see us from almost every continent, and we've treated patients from every state in the United States. That allows us to maintain a clinical database where we can answer important and relevant questions. It also pushes us as leaders to continue to find cutting edge treatments to further either improve the quality of life, or in certain subsets of the disease, improve survival rates.
This transcription has been edited for clarity.
