Guided Beam Treatment Is Extending Life For Patients With Pancreatic Cancer
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the first two paragraphs.
The lives of patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer could be extended by years with a “game-changing” radiation treatment that uses MRI technology to accurately target tumours.
A study has found that MRI-guided radiotherapy almost doubles the median survival rate in cases of inoperable pancreatic cancer compared with conventional treatment that uses CT scans.
It looks like a case of the more accurately you target your weapon, the more effective it is.
A few years before she died of a much more serious but totally unrelated cancer, my wife suffered from breast cancer.
- The cancer wasn’t massive and it had probably been caused by a severe bruise, where she had been struck by an exploding air-bag in a car accident.
- She also had a top-class surgeon in Cambridge. Barristers always get the best, as local chambers always know those who are being sued for malpractice.
- To make sure, the cancer didn’t return she had targeted radiotherapy in Harley Street daily for four or five weeks.
- She even travelled up to London from Suffolk daily on the train, often fitting Court appearances around the appointments.
- A few weeks before she died, she was checked for breast cancer and pronounced clear.
The treatment had worked and it convinced me of the value of targeted radiotherapy.
I must say, it increases my optimism, that pancreatic cancer might be one cancer, where we can at least prolong life in many cases.
My optimism about pancreatic cancer probably started , after the results of the research to which I added funding in a small way were published. I wrote about them in There’s More To Liverpool Than Football And The Beatles!.
The Anonymous Widower 
The Cyber Knife is available under the NHS at the Royal Marsden
Comment by Robin St.Clair | February 7, 2022 |
https://www.royalmarsden.nhs.uk/your-care/treatments/radiotherapy/cyberknife
Comment by Robin St.Clair | February 7, 2022 |
The strange thing about these times, is that there seems to be more innovation, than at any other time of my life.
Comment by AnonW | February 7, 2022 |
There is a great deal of innovation, – the basis of treatment for cancer was to give patients substances which were more poisonous to the tumour than to the rest of their body; it sounds a crass description but it is fairly accurate.
Now there are treatments such as guided bean therapies – similar to Proton Beam which is now available at The Christie, and I think Marsden have one as well now. They are able to accurately direct the beam at the cancer, damaged little or no healthy tissue.
And there is a immunotherapy. This will probably the treatment I will be given when my own cancer is the stage of needing major treatment, and I know that it is very positively thought of by patients who have had it.
Comment by nosnikrapzil | February 7, 2022 |