By: DoM Communications
In this month’s Chair’s Spotlight, we feature Kathryn Edmiston, MD, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology.
For Dr. Edmiston, a deeply personal experience with breast cancer inspired her to pursue a career in medical oncology. “I was inspired by the fact that I was personally dealing with breast cancer in my family; my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was a freshman in high school,” shared Dr. Edmiston. “She was diagnosed with metastatic disease and died in my first year of college.” Driven by this experience, Dr. Edmiston has dedicated nearly 40 years to caring for breast cancer patients at UMass.
Dr. Edmiston earned her MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. She then completed an internship and her Internal Medicine Residency in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics. Following her residency, Dr. Edmiston then completed a clinical fellowship in hematology/oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and has been a member of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at UMass ever since.
At UMass, Dr. Edmiston serves as director of the Bob Quinlan Breast Center, where patients with newly diagnosed are evaluated by a team of physicians that includes a surgeon, a radiation oncologist, a medical oncologist, cosmetic surgeon, if necessary, social work, and genetics. “This collaborative practice allows us to quickly formulate a plan for treatment. This clinic has been in place since the mid-1980s,” said Dr. Edmiston. “We were ahead of the curve and have continued this approach, which is very highly regarded.”
Dr. Edmiston and her colleagues collaborated to bring scalp cooling to UMass, a treatment that lowers the temperature of the scalp to prevent or reduce hair loss during chemotherapy. “I was committed to getting scalp cooling at UMass because, for cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, hair loss is one of the most devastating side effects,” said Dr. Edmiston. “We are now able to offer scalp cooling to all of our breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy who are at risk for hair loss.”
Additionally, Dr. Edmiston and her colleagues developed an introductory video that walks new cancer patients through the chemotherapy treatment process at UMass. “We did an introduction, then we walk them in the video to the infusion room, we introduce the oncology nurses and their roles, and go over other simple things,” explained Dr. Edmiston. “So far, the video has been very well received and takes away some of the fear and anxiety of showing up in a new place and not knowing what is going to happen.”
To further enhance cancer care at UMass, Dr. Edmiston hopes to introduce ancillary services to the clinic, offering patients services such as massage therapy to help improve the quality of life during treatment. “If a woman is sitting for two hours for chemotherapy, it would be great to have somebody there to offer a hand massage or other services. We are in the planning stages of adding these services to the clinic,” said Dr. Edmiston.
According to Dr. Edmiston, caring for her patients and guiding them throughout their cancer journey is one of the most rewarding aspects of her work.
“As of next year, I will have been here for 40 years, and I still have women who come back to see me 10, 15, 20 years later,” explained Dr. Edmiston. “It’s incredibly rewarding and gratifying to see them from start to finish. The progress that is being made is absolutely extraordinary, there has been an explosion of new therapies and diagnostic testing that allows us to personalize treatment for women with breast cancer resulting in better outcomes. I think that the challenge for the future is really the explosion of effective therapies and figuring out how best to use them, but I think we are going to have the tools to be able to figure out how to do it.”
We thank Dr. Edmiston for her many years of dedicated service to her patients and the Department of Medicine!