Simon Crompton

Head-to-head comparisons of the effectiveness of radiotherapy and surgery are not often – or easily – performed. Yet, for some types and stages of cancer, there is an increasingly apparent need for hard evidence about their comparative risks and benefits…

'Cancer’ is the weightiest of words. Jacky remembers the impact those two short syllables had when she was given her results after tests for breast cancer. “I went into this little room and they told me that I had cancer…

Radiation that kills only tumour cells and spares healthy tissue? It sounds too good to be true. But if the promise of recent research is fulfilled, the FLASH technique of ultra high dose-rate delivery could present the greatest transformation of…

Despite growing awareness of the importance of shared decision making in cancer, there is plenty of evidence that it is still not being implemented as it should be. A national survey of patient experience from the Danish Cancer Society found…

Spinal surgeon Bronek Boszczyk has said that training in complex surgery is like having to learn the violin during a full orchestral concert. The training revolves around closely supervised surgery on real patients in a real operating theatre – which…

It isn’t over when treatment’s over. Even if, as far as the clinician is concerned, therapy has been successful and the cancer is effectively ‘cured’, cancer patients often experience a nagging – sometimes devastating – fear that their cancer will…

Burnout. That short word barely conveys the dispirited cycle of weariness, negativity and powerlessness health staff experience when high aspirations to help and cure are consumed in an unattainable to-do list. “You're trying your best but nothing's moving and you…

Two weeks after receiving a brain tumour diagnosis, Martin was copied into an email from one of his healthcare team telling his GP that Martin was “understandably devastated by his diagnosis”. The words came as a shock. “My healthcare team…

Long-term emotionally and physically debilitating fatigue is a fact of daily life for many who have had cancer. Awareness is low, causes mysterious, and physicians are often sceptical or plead powerlessness – even though a growing body of research attests…

20th January 1933 ‒ 28th July 2021 When Louis Denis described himself as a “free thinker”, as he often did, the statement went beyond a vague assertion of independence from dogma and lazy thinking. It was an agenda for action…