ASCO: You’re listening to a podcast from Cancer.Net. This cancer information website is produced by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, known as ASCO, the world’s leading professional organization for doctors who care for people with cancer. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Cancer research discussed in this podcast is ongoing, so the data described here may change as research progresses. Brielle Gregory: Hi, everyone. I'm Brielle Gregory, a member of the Cancer.Net content team, and I'll be your host for today's Cancer.Net Podcast. Cancer.Net is the patient information website of ASCO, the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Today, we're going to be talking about chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. Our guest is Dr. Charles Loprinzi. Dr. Loprinzi is the Regis Professor of Breast Cancer Research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he is an emeritus chair of the Division of Medical Oncology and an emeritus vice-chair of the Department of Oncology. He is also the Cancer.Net Associate Editor for Psychosocial Oncology. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Loprinzi. Dr. Loprinzi: My pleasure to be here. Brielle Gregory: Today, ASCO is publishing a new guideline on the prevention and management of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy in survivors of adult cancers. Dr. Loprinzi served as the co-chair and lead author for this guideline. Before we begin, we should mention that Dr. Loprinzi has relationships to disclose related to this guideline. You can find his full disclosure statement on Cancer.Net. Now, let's talk a little bit about what this guideline means for people with cancer and those who care for them. So, Dr. Loprinzi, to get started, what is peripheral neuropathy? Dr. Loprinzi: Peripheral neuropathy is pathology of nerves that's in the peripheral part of the body. But my English teacher in high school, a Catholic nun, would not like me to define a term with using the actual words there. So it's disease of the nerves—I'm going to use nerves instead of neuropathy—that's in the part of the body that's at the end of the extremities, the hands and the feet. It's caused by chemotherapy. Not all chemotherapy drugs cause neuropathy or pathology of the nerves, but some do. And that's what we're talking about today. And it is the symptoms that people get, numbness, tingling, and pain. Mostly numbness and tingling start, and then pain can come later on, but they're all three quite obviously. Brielle Gregory: Thank you for explaining that. So why is this guideline on chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy important for patients? Dr. Loprinzi: It's important because it's a very prominent problem. It's very, very common. Again, not all chemotherapy drugs we give caused this particular problem, but some of them that we give-- and a good number of them that we give can cause this problem. And the problem can be bothersome while the patient's getting chemotherapy, and it can also last for a long time after chemotherapy is done. And that when I say a long time, that sometimes is months or years, and it could be a very prominent problem for some patients, a minority of patients there. There are some chemotherapy drugs like oxaliplatin, one of the drugs we give, that actually that neuropathy gets worse, the nerve problems get worse in the three months after stopping chemotherapy, and so you don't know the full extent of it for some time after you're done with the chemotherapy. Brielle Gregory: That's really important to note. So when it comes to preventing chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, what does this guideline say about preventing chemotherapy