Recent content by carrigallen

I agree that insurance changes and proposed changes in Congress are going to take a huge bite out of compensation. Much of oncology income is based on services (infusion fee, nurse fee, injection fee, etc). Bundling and changes in fee structures will hurt oncology the most, especially the top...

Rituxan + chlorambucil.

I think those are all four good places to train. I think the important factor is quality of the training program. Are you doing inpatient consult/service rotations, bone marrow biopsies, on-call all year, vs. do you have a lot of dedicated time for career development.

I think the palliative vs. curative is a dismal simplification. No patients walk into the clinic asking for "palliative treatment only, please". Our goal is to help that patient live as long as possible. There are a lot of patients walking around with Stage 4 cancer who are in remission...

I'm never quite sure what people mean by 'job market is hard in my area'. In my experience, there hasn't been any regional area that is so tight that a go-getter, energetic personality cannot find a job. As a first-year fellow in in Florida, I remember hearing how tough the local market was, and...

I agree. Classic heme has other downsides as well: - Most people don't understand their illness. - New appointments are time-sucks. - High proportion of regulars (hemophiliacs etc) are socioeconomically disadvantaged, on medicaid or county insurance. - Preoperative clearance requests, and other...

I think an ASCO (or IALSC, ESMO, ASH, etc) can definitely be listed in two categories, depending on the context. One, it counts as a journal abstract with your name on it, regardless of whether you are first-author, with a citation in the supplement for that journal (eg Blood, JCO, JTO, etc). eg...

I'm not into leukemia but I'd say MDACC is definitely on par, if not superior for certain leukemia research. Hagop Kantarjian is king of leukemia and he is the director at MDACC. I agree the residency background probably has more to do with location desirability. Texas etc.

While drug-antibody conjugates are certainly the way of the future, there is big downside to uptake of radioimmunotherapy in the US. The main problem is that administration of radioimmunotherapy requires special certification in radiation safety practices for infusion center, Radioactive...

Yes - many BMT departments in the USA will ask candidates who did not train at strong BMT centers to do 6 to 12 months of lower-paid fellowship time before they would consider hiring them as full faculty. It all depends on the context. Keep in mind also, that you don't need to complete 3 years...

It doesn't matter that much to *you*, at your stage. Unless you are trying to make a name for yourself as a translational scientist, I would say submit to the most realistic peer-reviewed print journal you can find. (eg impact factor between 1.1 to 5.0). Now, your program director, your...

If framed appropriately, I don't think a tactful email update to your Top 3 would be bad at all. Oral abstract presentation at ASH is an accomplishment that most faculty or fellows will never have, let alone applicants. You definitely need to highlight that.

If you really need to know, you can look up the original clinical trials in PubMed or Google Scholar, that report outcomes like objective response rate and median survival. Realistically though, this is guesswork.

While I can't endorse any statement that Ohio state is superior to the other center centers in OH, I can offer a few comments. Based in part on interview experience a few years ago. The fellows took no mandatory call. There were moonlighting opportunities. Their leadership in malignant...

I think this list depends on context. Some of the small community programs could potentially be the best, in terms of training for an excellent private practice. On the other hand, if you want to do Bone Marrow Transplant, then only a handful of centers would be the best. I think your 'other...