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Breast cancer surgeon Tari King talks about her research investigating why certain women develop breast cancer and about the long-term relationships she maintains with her patients.
{full transcript}
My name is Tari King and I’m a breast surgeon at the Department of Surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I’m also principal investigator of the breast surgery research laboratory. Our main focus is to try to understand why some women get breast cancer and why some women don’t. We try to study that at the level of the women’s breast tissue - what’s going on in one individual’s breast tissue that’s not going on in the other that may lead to a higher risk for breast cancer. Being able to do this at Memorial Sloan Kettering is really facilitated by patients being willing to allow us to use tissue samples… allow us to use blood samples. Without patient participation in research like this, we really wouldn’t be able to ask these questions or make advances in understanding what places one woman over another.
When I first meet with a patient, it’s very important for me to make them feel comfortable, to make sure that they’re in an environment where they feel like they can listen to what I have to say, and that they have someone with them or that we are going to be drawing a picture or writing down something for them to take away because it is a lot of information to absorb at the beginning so I want them to feel as comfortable as they can in order to listen to the information that I’m going to provide them.
I think that’s one of the unique things about being a breast cancer surgeon: we do see our patients for many, many years in follow-up and even once the real threat of their breast cancer is gone, we still have contact with the patients. We kind of grow old together, if you will.
