Physician's Personal Experience Helps SJRMC Provide Unique Cancer Care

Dr. Mohamed Farhat, MD

September 1, 2009, is the day cancer treatment was dramatically enhanced in Michiana. That’s when Mohamed Farhat, MD, joined Michiana Hematology Oncology at Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center’s Cancer Institute.

Not only is Dr. Farhat triple Board Certified in the areas of Hematology, Oncology, and Medicine, he is also an Assistant Professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, where he completed his Fellowship and Residency.

“We are so happy to be here in this area,” said Dr. Farhat. “Not only is this a great place to live and raise a family, but being here helps provide a university-based cancer treatment program to this area. We have at our disposal whatever we want and access to some of the greatest minds in cancer treatment.”

Rush University is home to one of the first medical colleges in the Midwest and one of the nation’s top-ranked nursing colleges, as well as graduate programs in allied health, health systems management, and biomedical research.

For more than 170 years, Rush has been leading the way in developing innovative and often life-saving treatments. Today, Rush is a thriving center for basic and clinical research, with physicians and scientists involved in hundreds of research projects developing and testing the effectiveness and safety of new therapies and medical devices.

This unique combination of research and patient care is now available in Michiana thanks to the connection and care provided at SJRMC by Dr. Farhat, as well as some poignant personal motivation.

“The patients have been very happy and enthusiastic about receiving the same care as they would in Chicago,” said Dr. Farhat. “I’ve always wanted to bring what I know to an area like this – a place where I can do the most amount of good.”

It wasn’t until his second year at Chicago Medical School that Dr. Farhat realized what “the most amount of good” would be.

Arriving in the United States with his family from France in 1988, Dr. Farhat took four years off between high school and the beginning of undergraduate work at Loyola University in Chicago to help his parents and two older siblings make ends meet at home. When he arrived at Chicago Medical School after graduating from Loyola, he still wasn’t sure what route medicine would take him.

“But during my second year of med school, one of our uncles who was very close with our immediate family developed Leukemia and died two weeks after being diagnosed,” Dr. Farhat explained. “I wanted answers – wanted to know how and why something like this could happen so fast. But nobody could tell me.
“From that point on, I decided that I wanted to be that person who could give answers and help patients and their families,” he continued. “Since that day, I’ve never looked back.”

Using an inherited work ethic from parents who took on extra work to make sure their children would have a solid foundation when it was their time to have families of their own, Dr. Farhat took extra classes and rotations to better prepare him.

“It’s very hard to do but you really have to lock yourself in a room or the library from 8am – 10 pm to just study, study, study,” he said. “But like anything, you get out of it what you put into it.”

At age 35, triple Board Certification and Assistant Professor status on his resume is all the proof one needs to see that Dr. Farhat has made the most of his young life.

“Needless to say, our parents are very proud,” he said with a big smile. “My sister is a lawyer in California and my brother is in his final year of Residency in neurosurgery in Miami. We are blessed with great parents.”

Local cancer patients and their families are feeling the results.

“When you treat cancer patients, many times you are committed to life-long therapy and patients become more like your own family members,” Dr. Farhat said. “It can be tough when you see them go when you have completely cured them because you’ve been a part of each others’ lives for a long time. But you can never experience anything quite like it when you know your patient is feeling better.”

National Healthcare Decisions Day: Advanced Directives

April 16, 2010 is National Healthcare Decisions Day. From 11:30 am - 1:30 pm tomorrow, Saint Joseph Chaplains will be available at a table outside Lakeside Dining at the Mishawaka hospital to provide information about Advanced Directives and tools for talking about wishes with family, friends and healthcare providers and executing written advance directives in accordance with Indiana state laws. Packets of all the forms will be available.

National Healthcare Decisions Day was established to encourage people to initiate conversation about their personal healthcare decisions and advanced directives.

By creating a dialogue, fewer families and providers will have to struggle with making potentially difficult decisions in the absence of guidance from the patient. Healthcare providers and facilities will be better equipped to address a crisis and honor a patient's wishes.

What is an advance directive? All adults can benefit from thinking about what their healthcare choices would be if in the future they were unable to speak for themselves. These decisions can be written down in an advance directive so that others know.

Advance directives come in two main forms:

• A healthcare power of attorney (or proxy, agent or surrogate) documents the person you select to be your voice to make decisions should you not be able to.
  
• A living will documents the types of medical treatments you would or would not want at the end of life.

 Our Saint Joseph Chaplains are always available to help patients and families discuss Advance Directives and complete necessary paperwork.

For more information contact Rev. Sue Breiner at (574) 335-2312.

Feedback from the Community

Big thanks to everyone on our Saint Joe team for working so hard to provide an excellent patient care experience. Below read some recently received letters commending your quality, compassionate care:

Mishawaka Campus Associates
I am very pleased to thank you for the thorough care and treatment I received at your new facility. Everyone I encountered, from the Emergency Entrance to Surgical Room to Critical Care through to my exit out the front door with my stent, treated me with courtesy and kindness. I am amazed at the great skill and talent of the highly committed army of people serving directly one to another to save, improve and extend human life.

Plymouth Campus Critical Care
It’s so very difficult to find the right words to tell each of you just how special you truly are. Over and over again, you have shown compassion and excellent care. How can we ever thank you enough? God bless each and every one of you.

Mishawaka Campus & Valet Service
The new hospital is beautiful, I took my husband there yesterday for outpatient surgery. Everyone was very friendly, I got a good feeling from the moment I approached the door and the valet said "Good Morning.”

To all of our patients - thank you trusting us with your health care needs.

National Cancer Control Month: Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Assists in Cancer Treatment Recovery

April is National Cancer Control Month and thanks to early detection and new therapies, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that 64 percent of adults whose cancer is diagnosed today can expect to be living in five years.

Yet after beating cancer, many patients who undergo radiation therapy discover a hidden complication that may not come to light until years after they concluded treatments.

"Radiation doesn’t differentiate between cancerous and healthy tissue," says Dr. Carol Ann Royer, panel physician at The Wound Healing Center at Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in Mishawaka. "Radiation causes a lack of oxygen in the body's tissues but visible symptoms of soft tissue radiation injury may not occur until as much as 20 years later. In fact, one study showed an average time of eight years and seven months before patients who underwent radiation experienced these complications."

Of the more than one million people who will be diagnosed with cancer this year, half will undergo radiation therapy which, according to the American Cancer Society, will result in serious radiation complications for up to five percent.

"Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is the only therapy known to reverse the vascular compromise responsible for late radiation effects," Royer explains. "There are no alternative therapies that correct the problems these patients have although narcotics and antidepressants have been used to control the pain with limited success and significant side effects. Nothing is a cure-all but hyperbaric oxygen therapy offers 60 to 80 percent of patients either improvement or complete resolution of the injury."

While receiving hyperbaric oxygen treatments, patients watch movies while relaxing on a bed incased in a large see-through plastic shell as they are surrounded by 100 percent oxygen at higher-than-normal atmospheric pressure which enables oxygen molecules to pass through the plasma to the body more easily and speed healing.

The local experts at the Saint Joseph Wound Healing Center in Mishawaka and Plymouth offer hyperbaric oxygen therapy and provide these tips to identifying and treating radiation therapy: 

• Unlike more typical chronic wounds, soft tissue radiation injuries are usually not as visible. A biopsy is not always practical so all other causes of symptoms need to be considered before a diagnosis is made. 
• Most common symptoms that suggest radiation injury are presence of blood in urine, rectal bleeding, vaginal discharge and pain.
• Post-irradiated skin initially may resemble early skin changes consistent with thermal injuries: redness or alterations in pigmentation, itching, wounds caused by excess scratching and pain.
• Areas especially prone to tissue injury are those covering bony prominences, surgical areas and those on the face. Moist skin folds such as those under the breast, the armpit and around the anus and genitals are also vulnerable.
• Soft tissue radiation injuries often arise after tooth extraction in patients with prior radiation therapy. The second most common group of patients are those who have received radiation to treat gynecological, prostrate and colon cancer.
• Radiation injuries may occur spontaneously or in response to a traumatic injury or infection. The wounds may appear superficial and the pain associated with these injuries is often the reason a patient seeks treatment.
• Patients who are currently receiving chemotherapy must have a thorough review by a hyperbaric physician before being treated for injuries since some drugs may have adverse affects.

For more information about radiation injury and treating and preventing chronic wounds, contact the Wound Healing Center located at the Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in Mishawaka by calling 574-335-6210. For Plymouth, call 574-941-3140.