CCO Presents Results of Clinician Utilization of Online Decision Support Tool Presented as Part of 2011 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago

RESTON, Va., June 3, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Clinical Care Options (CCO), a leader in education for healthcare professionals, and several esteemed breast cancer experts will present a poster titled, "Utilization and clinical practice impact of an interactive tool for guiding choice of systemic adjuvant treatment (adj TX) for patients with early breast cancer (EBC): Abstract #6063" at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, Saturday, June 4, 2011.

Current guidelines list more than 20 regimens as options for adjuvant breast cancer treatment, and tools such Adjuvant! Online provide risk assessment based on patient characteristics and expected risk reduction but lack guidance on specific treatment choice.

CCO developed this tool to show users the choice of therapy of 6 experts across 864 case permutations. The clinician simply enters specific patient and tumor characteristics, indicates what therapy he/she thinks is optimal, and then receives expert guidance from 6 faculty members on the optimal treatment for that specific patient.

The tool is available to review and use at clinicaloptions.com/EBCtool.

"We found some important differences between user choice of therapy and expert-recommended therapy," said Peter Ravdin, MD, Ph.D., Director of the Breast Cancer Program, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas.

One notable difference was that clinicians using the tool made initial treatment choices of some regimens that were never selected by experts. For example, the regimen of cyclophosphamide- doxorubicin(AC)-paclitaxel administered every 3 weeks was selected in 20% of node-positive cases by participants, even though the evidence is clear that AC-paclitaxel weekly is a superior regimen. The true impact of the tool is seen in clinician responses when asked if expert recommendations affected their treatment choice. Approximately 60% of those who chose to respond to the question said that yes, their treatment choice was impacted. In light of this, it was concluded by the authors that this tool may positively affect clinicians' treatment decisions and improve patient care.

"Using a combination of CCO's complex technology and our sophisticated approach to medical education, we have not only identified gaps in clinician practice for breast cancer care but have also been able to provide long-needed access to 6 expert opinions on-demand right from the point of care in the form of this tool," said Linda Coogle, President and Chief Operations Officer for CCO.

"Utilization and clinical practice impact of an interactive tool for guiding choice of systemic adjuvant treatment (adj TX) for patients with early breast cancer (EBC)" will be presented at the 2011 ASCO Annual Meeting, Saturday June 4, 2011, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. in McCormick Place Hall A (General Poster Session, Abstract 6063, Poster43C).

The abstract for this poster is available on the ASCO Web site at: http://abstract.asco.org/AbstView_102_77944.html.

About Clinical Care Options
Clinical Care Options, a leader in the development of innovative, interactive, online medical education programs and proprietary medical education technologies for healthcare professionals, creates and publishes original continuing medical education and information resources that are designed specifically for healthcare providers in the areas of HIV, hepatitis/gastroenterology, and oncology. CCO's educational programs are developed not only to provide the latest scientific information but also to support the understanding, confidence, application, and competence of healthcare professional learners. In addition to the latest point-of-care resource, CCO inPractice™, CCO provides a spectrum of live and online educational programs and formats. For more information about the company and its programs, visit its Web site at clinicaloptions.com.

SOURCE Clinical Care Options