The Rise of the Expert Patient in Cancer: From Backseat Passenger to Co-navigator.

PURPOSE: Patients who have cancer have leveraged the Internet to gain a better understanding of their disease and connect across geographic boundaries with others facing the same challenges. Online cancer communities have developed into resources that highlight new research and evolving care pathways. Combined with increasing health literacy and social media, they have enabled some patients to become experts in their cancer. This combination of empowerment and expertise describes the new "e-patients." METHODS: We reviewed the literature to identify key areas where expert e-patients have directly participated in advancing cancer medicine, as well as opportunities available to those who wish to become more involved in research advocacy. RESULTS: E-patients are widely acknowledged as key stakeholders in oncology by clinicians, researchers, cancer centers, government agencies, and nonprofits. Their input is vital for informing cancer care delivery, developing and launching research initiatives, creating care guidelines and pathways, and formulating policy. CONCLUSION: Expert e-patients play an expanded role in their own care and in larger conversations regarding practice, research, and policy. Clinicians can engage e-patients as partners in cancer care as we work together towards improving health care access and outcomes for people with cancer.

"My Patient Was Diagnosed With Nontargetable Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. What Now?" Diagnosis and Initial Treatment Options for Newly Diagnosed Patients With Advanced NSCLC.

Although lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the United States and worldwide, the rate at which Americans are dying from lung cancer is declining. Improving survival can be explained, in large part, by a growing understanding of the heterogeneous biology of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) as well as recent successes of novel therapeutic strategies more effective and tolerable than platinum-based chemotherapy. We now recognize distinct subtypes of NSCLC, defined by molecular profiling and immunohistochemistry, with different treatment algorithms, including targeted small molecular inhibitors and immunotherapy for each. Both biomarker selection and preferred frontline strategies continue to evolve rapidly, making it difficult for many practitioners to keep up. In this review, we will first describe the recommended initial workup for a patient with advanced or metastatic NSCLC in 2018; next, we present an algorithm to aid oncologists in the selection of the most appropriate therapy for treatment-naive patients with NSCLC, and finally, we offer a look into future treatment options through a discussion of ongoing clinical trials.