In his latest “Health Care Heart to Heart” podcast, now streaming, UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, speaks with Sunil Hingorani, MD, PhD, director of the Pancreatic Cancer Center of Excellence at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center.
In the first of two discussions that will be posted during Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, Dr. Hingorani speaks about the personal impact pancreas cancer has had on his life, the difficulties of early detection and the disease’s survival rates.
“This battle and this cancer is very personal for me and for my family,” Dr. Hingorani says on the podcast. “And that goes back to a time when I was just finishing my clinical training in oncology, and my father was diagnosed with metastatic pancreas cancer, and I had trained in gastrointestinal malignancies. I was actually doing research in a laboratory that studies the key mutation that drives pancreatic cancer.
“But this was the late 1990s, and frankly, we did not have any therapies, essentially at all, to even attempt to treat this disease. So, it was an extraordinarily challenging, frustrating and ultimately futile attempt to try to impact the disease significantly.”
Speaking to Dr. Gold, whose family also has been impacted by pancreas cancer, Dr. Hingorani discusses their shared passion to fight the disease, which, he said, “contributes to what I think is a really radically new approach to how we study the disease, how we deliver care to our patients and how we get the various stakeholders, the scientists, the clinicians, the support services, to engage with each other and interact in a more formal and structured way from the beginning.”
The second half of Dr. Gold’s discussion with Dr. Hingorani will post the week of Nov. 13.
“Health Care Heart to Heart” posts new podcasts every other week, as Dr. Gold speaks to national, regional and local health care leaders on issues of importance. On each new episode, Dr. Gold and his guests will share information, explore health care challenges and opportunities and leave listeners thinking about how they, too, can make a difference.
“Health Care Heart to Heart” episodes will be updated on the official podcast website and can be streamed on the following platforms: Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.