University of Illinois Cancer Center Deputy Director VK Gadi, MD, PhD, was featured in the digital media outlet Oncology News Central, commenting on the study “Musician’s Experience After Breast Cancer Treatment: Defining Musical Toxicity and its Frequency,” published in JCO Oncology Practice.
The study’s authors from the Mayo Clinic focused on musicians because many are also breast cancer survivors. “Given the level of fine sensory-motor skill required for musicianship, we hypothesized that musicians experience unique manifestations of breast cancer treatment toxicities,” the authors wrote. Among 535 survey respondents who self-identified as musicians, over a quarter of musicians who underwent breast cancer treatment had trouble with their musical endeavors during or after breast cancer treatment. The majority of patients didn’t see their abilities return to baseline after completing treatment, the study reported.
In the Oncology News Central article, Gadi praised the study: “This article does an amazing job of telling us where the deficiencies are in these patients in terms of musicality after treatment. We didn’t have numbers around that, and now we do.” The findings could apply to other patients with cancer whose livelihoods depend on retaining fine motor skills: “We have to either head this off at the pass or have a strong plan in place for rehabilitation on the other end so we can get as much function back for these folks as possible,” he said.