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In This Issue:
Harley Haynes (at left) presents keynote speaker Richard Edelson with a gift.
Treatment of disease is an increasingly multidisciplinary task, yet opportunities to consider the clinical and scientific implications of a disease process with colleagues from other specialties can be limited.
Hosted by BWH's Department of Dermatology and sponsored by longtime BWH donors Heidi and Scott Schuster, the Harley A. Haynes Lectureship and Symposium creates an interdisciplinary forum in which clinicians and researchers can do just that, inspiring discourse between specialties and generating innovative clinical and research ideas.
This year's fourth annual lectureship and symposium opened on April 24 with keynote speaker Richard Edelson, MD, professor and chair of Dermatology at Yale University Medical School. He discussed cutaneous T-cell lymphoma-a type of cancer that begins in the white blood cells and attacks the skin, and is one of several types of lymphoma collectively called non-Hodgkin lymphoma-and how partnering with patients can help them overcome cancer.
"The theme of the two-day event is really humanism in medicine, or taking care of the whole patient," said Thomas S. Kupper, MD, chairman of Dermatology, who introduced Edelson. "Harley Haynes is the consummate physician in that sense."
Edelson discussed how listening to his cancer patients and observing their immune system responses taught him the lessons that eventually resulted in his invention of extracorporeal photopheresis. During this process, white blood cells are treated with a photoactive drug, which is then activated with ultraviolet light. The blood is removed from the patient and then passes through an apparatus that separates it into red blood cells, white blood cells and plasma. The cancerous cells are treated with radiation before the blood is returned to the patient.
In the following day's symposium, speakers from Internal Medicine, Radiation Oncology and Dermatology discussed both making patients feel whole, as well as personal experiences as patients. The symposium speakers were David Roberts, MD, associate professor of Medicine and dean for external education at Harvard Medical School ("Lessons from the Other Side: Doctor as Patient"); Chrysalyne Schmults, MD, MSCE, assistant professor of Dermatology and director of the Mohs and Dermatologic Surgery Center at BWH ("Needles in a haystack: High Risk squamous cell carcinoma and the BWH staging system"); Paul Nguyen, MD, associate professor of radiation oncology and director of Prostate, Brachytherapy and Clinical Trials for Genitourinary Radiation Oncology at BWH ("A tale of 2 prostate cancers: whom to screen, whom to treat, and how to treat while keeping the patient whole"); and Harley Haynes, MD, professor and vice chairman of the Department of Dermatology at BWH: ("Am I Whole Yet?").
Harley A. Haynes, MD, for whom the event is named, is vice chairman of the Department of Dermatology at BWH. He has served as a renowned educator at Harvard Medical School for more than 40 years.