Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute
Also known as the MMCCI, the Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute is the host of the Northeast’s most complete record of oncology services and information.
The Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute is now offering its world-class medical care to mesothelioma patients. The Maine Medical Center is now delivering services such as early detection, cancer prevention, and state-of-the-art therapies. There is a reason that the Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute is seen as the state’s leading provider of cancer care.
As a new member of the National Cancer Institute’s Community CAncer Centers Program Network, the MMCCI is one of fourteen cancer centers in the entire country that can offer access to expanded research opportunities, as well as multidisciplinary care for communities that have harder access to cancer and medical care, such as agricultural communities. Now that it is part of such an acclaimed network, the MMCCI is recieving huge benefits, such as a recent $3.5 million dollar award for cancer research and care.
This award is intended to increase community access and develop new approaches that increase the availability of cancer care to the underinsured, disadvantaged community members of Maine.
Experience With Handling Mesothelioma
Surgeon Tracey Wiegel, M.D., has been serving as the Medical Director of the Comprehensive Thoracic Oncology program at the MMCCI since 2012. The addition of Dr. Wiegel gave the institution an immense boost in credibility regarding mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases, because these cancer require very specific, unique care. Hailing from the University of Wisconsin’s Carbone Cancer Center, Dr. Weigel spend her previous ten years before moving to Maine as part of Wisconsin’s mesothelioma team.
Her strengths are realized in the surgical treatment of thoracic malignancies in the lung and esophagus, as well as mesothelioma. Dr. Weigel hopes to duplicate her successes from Wisconsin; in Maine, she plans on treating between ten and twenty mesothelioma annually. She is a firm believer in novel surgical techniques, such as the extra pleural pneumonectomy, which is now considered safer and much more successful than previously thought due to higher quality chemotherapy drugs and anesthesia.
More Surgeries and Better Results
The Maine Medical Cancer Center Institute is famous for performing surgeries for more types of cancer than any other hospital in the state of Maine. The outcomes at the MMCCI consistently exceed or meet the standards of other hospitals in the United States. Thanks to an enormous surplus of subspecialty-trained surgeons, the MMCCI is the first location that you are bound to hear about in the state of Maine. As the sole hospital in the Northeast United States with the resources to perform intraperitoneal hyperthermic chemoperfusion (IHCP), which is specifically used to target abdominal tumors like those found in peritoneal mesothelioma, it is one of a kind. It happens to be the only location in Maine with the surgical manpower for both metastatic and primary liver cancers, laparoscopic partial nephrectomy for kidney cancer, and comprehensive treatment for colorectal cancer.
The MMCCI is set apart from other institutions by its integrative approach towards patient care. By using different treatment techniques, such as chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery together, the patient is much more likely to experience a successful treatment. The MMCCI has specific “tumor boards” that congregate on a regular basis, pathologists, social workers, and groups of specialists from other disciplines who discuss together about the trajectory of each individual cancer patient in the cancer center.
The MMCCI has received a designation from the Association of Community Cancer Centers as one of five highly reputed programs in the entire country for its integrative approach towards prostate cancer treatment.
The Patient Navigator Program
The MMCCI was the first to launch a patient navigator program in the state of Maine. Beginning in 2008, the patient navigator program allows chronic disease patients to meet with a specialist, who then guides them through the confusing process of choosing a treatment plan and a way to pay for it. These individuals who do the consulting are typically versed in the fields of nursing, patient advocating, as well as social work. They are accessible for all sorts of advice, such as setting up appointments, shedding light on difficult diagnoses, and helping patients through deciding on a specific approach to treatment. They offer personalized medical advice that is invaluable to those who are approaching or enduring the fight against cancer.
Stressing the Importance of Clinical Trials
A huge aspect of Maine Medical Center’s success story is the stress placed upon clinical research. There are hundreds of clinical trials at any given time, most of them focused on various types of cancer. These clinical trials contain as many as three-thousand patients at any given time. The MMCCI is Maine’s pioneer in clinical trials involving cancer, and conducts an average of two hundred and fifty studies annually. Collaborating with the Maine Center for Cancer Medicine, which is the biggest oncology center in the entire region, as well as Maine Health, a nonprofit group of health care providers and organizations, this collective forms an integrative program which stretches all across the state of Maine. As part of the National Cancer Institute’s Community Cancer Center Program, the MMCCI is able to engage with research and scientific efforts across a plethora of different oncological disciplines.