ASCO and Cancer.Net: guidelines written for patients

ASCO stands for the American Society of Clinical Oncology. It was established in 1964. It describes itself as the world's leading professional organization for physicians and oncology professionals caring for people with cancer, and it is committed to the principle that knowledge conquers cancer.

That is a mouthful. Here is the plainer version. ASCO is the club your oncologist belongs to, and it is where a great deal of cancer knowledge gets organized and shared.

Most of what ASCO does falls into a few buckets.

It writes clinical practice guidelines. These are recommendations for how to treat particular situations, based on reviewed evidence.

It publishes journals, which is where completed studies appear in full.

It runs meetings, and it posts the abstracts, posters, slides and videos from them. This matters more than it sounds. A lot of new cancer research becomes public for the first time at an ASCO meeting, which is why you see the acronym in news stories every spring.

And it runs education for clinicians, so the people treating you keep learning.

For many years, ASCO's patient education site was Cancer.Net. If you were treated a while ago, or if a nurse handed you a printout, you may know the name.

That address now redirects. Going to cancer.net sends you to the American Cancer Society's site instead. The two organizations describe a collaboration to make it simpler for patients to find authoritative cancer information by creating a single, online resource. ASCO says it and its oncologists are contributing and vetting content there, including on breaking and emerging cancer issues. Both groups mention going beyond written articles, with podcasts and other ways of distributing reliable information.

So the ASCO patient content did not disappear. It moved in with a roommate.

If you have an old bookmark or an old handout with a Cancer.Net web address on it, do not assume the page is gone. Let the redirect carry you, then search for your cancer type on the site you land on.

Three practical things.

You can read patient-facing cancer information that oncologists have vetted, free, without an account. Start from the redirect and look for your cancer type or your treatment.

You can find out what the professional guidance for your situation says. ASCO guidelines are published openly. They are written for clinicians, so the language is dense, but the summary sections are often readable and can tell you what the standard options are.

And you can look at what was presented at recent ASCO meetings. If you have heard about a promising drug, the abstract is often the actual source underneath the headline, and it will be more careful than the headline was.

There is a fourth, quieter use. Knowing ASCO exists gives you a fair question to ask in the room. "Is there an ASCO guideline for this?" is not a challenge. It is a reasonable request for context.

ASCO does not treat anyone. There is no ASCO clinic, no ASCO doctor who will look at your scans, no ASCO staffer who can review your case.

It will not tell you whether your oncologist made the right call. Guidelines describe reasonable approaches for groups of people. Your situation includes details no guideline knows about.

It does not run a patient helpline for medical questions, and it cannot help with your bill, your insurance denial or your travel. Those needs are real, and other organizations handle them.

It also cannot promise the newest research is settled. A meeting abstract is early. Sometimes the finding holds up and changes practice. Sometimes it does not.

Some people find enormous comfort in going to the source. If that is you, ASCO's material is a good place to go, because it is written by people who treat this disease rather than people selling something.

But abstracts are compressed and technical, and it is easy to read a hopeful sentence about a small early study and carry it into your next appointment as though it were a promise.

A better move is to print the page, bring it, and ask one question. Does this apply to me? Your oncologist can answer that in a minute, and you will have spent your energy well.