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Fat. It isn’t said in polite company, and doctors never use it with patients because it is considered rude and inflammatory. But fat is now a disease. OK-obesity is a disease. The American Medical Association has proclaimed it as such, and now we are free to discuss it unhindered by rules of etiquette.

A 40-year-old woman with no significant family history of cancer came to me for a second opinion about her widely metastatic infiltrating gastric cancer.

If you or your loved one had cancer, how would you go about picking their treating oncologist? What would you want to know about their experience in that disease? And if a patient asks you how many cases you have treated with their diagnosis, will you look at them and be totally honest?

A group of cancer and other healthcare advocacy organizations applauded a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires private insurers to cover the routine medical costs of patients participating in clinical trials. However, many of those patients will continue to face roadblocks to participating in trials unless the federal government provides clear guidance on implementation, the groups said in a recent letter.

Have you ever read someone’s note in the EMR and noticed it says “normal” in every section under physical exam, when in fact, the patient has had a mastectomy, a markedly enlarged liver, 3+ edema, or (horrors!) an amputation that goes undocumented?

This article will review these intersections of exercise and oncology, discuss the known mechanisms by which exercise exerts its salutary effects, and touch upon the future directions of exercise research in the oncology setting. Finally, recommendations are provided for clinicians to help patients with and without cancer take advantage of the benefits of physical activity.

How often do you refer patients for molecular profiling of a malignant tumor? For which of the following tumor types would you be most likely to recommend molecular profiling? Answer these questions and more.