Dr. Edgar Staren: Integrated medicine is a term that’s been used in varieties of manners depending on where you read it. CTCA refers to integrated medicine as a combination of traditional therapy and complimentary therapy, but more specific than that, the traditional therapy is that, which is guided by highly qualified professionals, using the state of the art technology.
Tomotherapy in the area of radiation therapy, radiofrequency ablation in the areas of surgery, such as catheter administration of chemotherapy for our medical oncologists in conjunction with our radiologists, our nutritional team and the like. Supported by our complementary team, our mind-body team, our nutritional team, our pastoral care team, and the whole gamut in complementary medicine to support those traditional therapies. So integrated together to optimize the treatment of the patient.
We meet regularly. That particular team ends up meeting at least three times a week in discussing all the patients under our care for hour, an hour and a half, going over in detail what’s occurring with a particular patient so that we make sure that we’re communicating, we’re getting information from our colleagues, making a treatment plan and bringing that back to the patient so that they can be empowered by the entire team's information to guide their own therapy.
We firmly believe that if we’re going to treat patients properly that they should be treated like you would treat your mother, your father, your brother, and your sister. It’s our obligation to bring information to the patient in terms they understand so that they can then make a rational, intelligent, decision on how they want to be treated.