Cleveland Clinic speeds rare diagnoses with fast-tracked specialty care

Cleveland Clinic Cancer Institute’s rare cancers and blood diseases program is accelerating care for patients with hard-to-diagnose conditions.

The program offers diagnosis and management for 84 neoplastic and non-neoplastic conditions. If there’s a suspicion that a referred patient may have a rare disease, the goal is to have them seen within days. Patients are often scheduled with multiple specialists — such as an oncologist, pathologist, radiologist and cardiologist — all on the same day. 

Biopsies performed outside the system are routinely reviewed in-house to confirm or clarify diagnoses, with samples also used for genomic analysis to guide treatment. 

“In community settings or in non-specialized centers, these diseases may be new to physicians or even pathologists,” Program Director Sudipto Mukherjee, MD, PhD, said in a Jan. 22 news release. “If you don’t have a certain amount of exposure to these conditions, you may miss the diagnosis. That’s why we almost always request that biopsies performed outside of Cleveland Clinic receive an in-house review here.”

In addition to clinical care, the program connects patients to suitable clinical trials and, when appropriate, coordinates enrollment at outside institutions. 

Patients and local providers can also access services via virtual visits and second opinions. Many Cleveland Clinic clinicians hold licensure in multiple states to support this effort.

Learn more here.