Follow-up Care After Cancer Treatment
Now that your cancer treatment is done, you’re ready to get back to normal life. However, many cancer survivors find that life after cancer is a “new” normal. Physical and emotional changes brought on by cancer or its treatment can linger for years or a lifetime. We’re dedicated to providing emotional support and practical guidance to help you navigate your life after cancer.
Follow-up Care
As a cancer survivor, regular follow-up care is important. Your care plan should include frequent visits to a primary care doctor, appropriate cancer screenings and healthy lifestyle choices such as exercise and proper nutrition.
MD Anderson has tools to help you and your primary care doctor create a follow-up care plan to suit your needs:
- See our list of recommended cancer screening exams and ask your doctor which ones are right for you.
- Visit our prevention and screening page for guidance to help you manage your health and reduce your risk of recurrence or new cancers.
- MD Anderson’s cancer survivorship algorithms can help your primary doctor follow best practices in the post-treatment care of cancer survivors. Find the cancer survivorship algorithm that best describes your cancer and share it with your doctor.
Top four questions I receive about cancer survivorship care
I can normally tell within the first 2-3 minutes of meeting someone if they’ve received the proper orientation about what to expect from me and/or survivorship care.
When they haven’t, their questions tend to run along the lines of, “Who are you?” “Why am I seeing you instead of the doctor who's been treating me for the past four years?” and “How are you associated with the Endocrine Center?”
But when they have been prepared, their questions are more focused on themselves as individuals.
Here, I’ll address the questions I hear most often, as well as the basics of survivorship care, how it differs from active cancer treatment and why it’s important.
What happens during a survivorship care visit?
During survivorship visits, we’ll do a physical exam, check your blood work and monitor your imaging, just as your oncologists did when you were still in active cancer treatment. But we’re also going to screen you for possible late effects, and talk about cancer prevention, ways you can reduce your risk of a recurrence, and other important aspects of your health.
I’ll ask you when your last mammogram or prostate exam was, for instance, or if you’ve had a colonoscopy yet. We’ll also talk about your psychological health, other cancer screenings you’re eligible for, as well as any chronic health conditions you might have, such as hypertension, diabetes or high cholesterol.
This can be a really eye-opening experience for some patients, because they’ve spent the last 5 or 10 years worrying only about cancer. They never stopped to think about their heart health or their blood pressure. And nobody ever asked them about these things because they had no primary care physician (PCP).
MD Anderson Survivorship Clinics
Our survivorship clinics can also help you develop a follow-up care plan to ensure you’re getting the most out of life after cancer. Each clinic has specialists who focus on a specific cancer type, providing care based on guidelines designed for survivors just like you.
Our survivorship clinics
- Adolescent and young adult cancer
- Breast cancer
- Childhood cancer
- Gastrointestinal cancer
- Genitourinary cancer
- Gynecologic cancer
- Head and neck cancer
- Leukemia
- Lymphoma
- Melanoma
- Neurosurgery
- Sarcoma
- Stem cell transplant
- Thoracic cancer
- Thyroid cancer
Survivorship care plans
A survivorship care plan offers a personalized overview of your cancer journey and future health recommendations.
After completing your treatment, make sure to keep detailed records of your cancer diagnosis and treatment(s). Important documents, such as a cancer treatment summary and a survivorship care plan, can help ease the transition from cancer treatment to survivorship care with other doctors.
Survivorship treatment plans often include:
- Regular physical exams with an overview of your recent medical history
- Monitoring for early detection of new or returning cancers
- Management of cancer and treatment-related side effects
- Lifestyle coaching and tips to help reduce cancer risk
- Referrals to community resources and support groups
Read more about the importance of a survivorship care plan (pdf).
While our team of survivorship specialists can help develop your follow-up care plan, you should still make regular appointments with your primary care doctor for overall health check-ups. We will communicate with your primary doctor about non-cancer care, but you’ll need to share your survivorship plan with them and follow up regularly.
To make an appointment in our cancer survivorship clinics, speak to your MD Anderson doctor or health care team. They can refer you to the appropriate survivorship clinic.
Primary Care
Primary Care Providers (PCPs) take care of many health conditions and look after a person’s health over time. Survivorship clinics are a great resource for specialized follow-up care, but primary care is best for providing a broad scope of preventative measures and personalized monitoring.
It can be stressful to start seeing a new doctor after building strong relationships with your oncologists. However, PCPs take care of your day-to-day health needs. A long-term relationship with a PCP can help keep you healthy and lower your medical costs. A PCP can also teach you ways to stay healthy, treat you when you are sick and help you get more advanced care when you need it.
Benefits of primary care in survivorship
Getting follow-up care through your PCP can improve your care and has several benefits:
- Reduced anxiety: It is normal to feel anxiety when going back to where your cancer was originally treated. Having a PCP in a separate location can lower your anxiety, making you more likely to get consistent follow-up care.
- Lower follow-up costs: The cost of follow-up care from PCPs is usually lower than it is with cancer specialists. This lower cost helps you and people across all income levels to access the care they need.
- Personalized care: Your PCP will monitor for possible late effects of your cancer treatment. These may include conditions such as heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes and sexual health or fertility issues. Depending on the type of cancer treatment you received, you may need to be screened for other conditions.
- Preventative care: Your PCP is your expert for disease prevention. They provide preventative care, cancer screenings, vaccines, monitor for and manage common chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure, and provide advice on how to live a healthier lifestyle.
- Continuity of care: Your PCP monitors your baseline health over time. It is not unusual for a PCP to find diseases during a routine checkup. Your provider can evaluate and treat a variety of illnesses and, if necessary, refer you to a specialist.
How to find primary care
It is important to find a PCP who is qualified, fits your personality and accepts your insurance plan. Many strategies can help you find the right provider:
- Talk with people you trust, such as family members, friends and neighbors.
- Ask other health care professionals you know, such as your dentist, a nurse or another doctor.
- Search an online national directory of health care providers, such as the American Board of Family Medicine.
- Contact your insurance company or visit their website.