Caroline's experience of personalised breast cancer care

Caroline, aged 49, a Neuroscientist from, South Cambridgeshire, was the first profoundly deaf person to use LED lights as an effective way to communicate with her clinical team during breast cancer treatment. 

This innovative technique – which introduces a simple yet effective LED ‘traffic light’ system as a way of communicating to the patient during a highly targeted radiotherapy treatment - has been pioneered by GenesisCare’s radiotherapy team at their cancer care centre in Cambridge and is now being rolled out to other centres in their UK network.  

In what’s thought to be a world’s first, this provided Caroline, as a hearing-impaired patient, with the most accurate treatment possible after she struggled to hear critical medical instructions during radiotherapy at her local cancer hospital, following her first breast cancer diagnosis. 

Despite contracting meningitis as a small child which left her profoundly deaf, Caroline went on to obtain her PhD from Kings College London and realised her ambition of becoming a Neuroscientist. In March 2021, at the age of 47, Caroline was diagnosed with Stage 3 ER positive breast cancer and successfully underwent chemotherapy and surgery to remove the tumour followed by radiotherapy.

In September 2022, Caroline was given the devastating news she had a second breast tumour in her left breast and underwent further surgery and chemotherapy. After this second mastectomy, she was advised she’d need a more complex radiotherapeutic approach because radiation targeted to the left breast increases the risk of damage to the heart. GenesisCare was recommended to Caroline as a private option for specialist radiotherapy treatment: surface-guided radiotherapy combined with a breathing technique called deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH), which helps keep delicate organs such as the heart away from the radiation beam.

Caroline says: “The deep inspiration breath hold technique usually involves the radiographer telling you over an intercom when to take a deep breath and hold it, to separate your chest wall away from your heart.”

“When I went to GenesisCare and we discussed my previous communication challenges, the team were excellent and came up with a relatively easy solution that would work for me. It was a pivotal moment for me, I felt truly heard"

Yasmine Tate, Lead Therapy Radiographer at GenesisCare Cambridge who was part of the team that created the pioneering approach says: “We were determined to deliver a positive experience and the highest quality of care for Caroline, which meant we had to find a way to communicate during her treatment. The team took it on as a personal mission. We discussed how best to facilitate visual prompts to communicate to Caroline during treatment via simple ‘breath in’ and ‘breath out’ instructions that she could understand. We brainstormed a few ideas and decided that if we used a simple set of LED lights and attached them to the real time coach, a device that gives the patient an indication where to breathe up to then we could switch the lights to green when we were ready for Caroline to take a breath in, then back to red again when she could breathe normally. It worked!”

While this innovative LED light communication method was developed especially for Caroline to support her DIBH treatment, it has since been presented at the European SGRT conference in London and is now being adopted across GenesisCare nationally, to help provide other hearing-impaired patients with the very best cancer care and treatment. 

Caroline continues “I‘m so thankful to the GenesisCare team for listening to me and devising a truly personalised solution - and I’m thrilled this method is now being used to help other hearing-impaired breast cancer patients.  With the LED lights and the simple stop-go system, I knew exactly what I needed to do, when. I always felt reassured and supported by the team and more importantly I always felt safe.”

Yasmine Tate continues: “The use of LED lights in Caroline’s case is an example of how, as a team, we work closely with our patients to ensure they receive personalised and effective treatment as well as positive experience. We share best practice with colleagues across all 14 of our outpatient centres across the UK and look forward to using the same approach with future patients who may benefit from using the LED lights as a way to communicate.” 

As a scientist and a mother, Caroline is passionate about sharing her story to encourage others to speak up if they are struggling during treatment. She says: “I’m thrilled that the LED technique will be used to help other patients. I’m very proud to be involved in this medical ‘first’ and play a small part in helping other patients with hearing difficulties – which could include older people or people whose first language isn’t English - receive the cancer treatment and care they deserve.”

Caroline completed her cancer treatment in August 2023 and is feeling well enough to indulge in her passion for high-adrenaline sports.  Caroline concludes: “No red lights for me.  Life is all about the green lights now – Go, Go, Go!”