Author
|
Topic: Kennedy fought aggressive cancer (Read 602 times) |
|
Walter Watts
Archon
Gender: 
Posts: 1571
Reputation: 8.67
Rate Walter Watts
Just when I thought I was out-they pull me back in
  
|
 |
Kennedy fought aggressive cancer
« on: 2009-08-26 15:53:56 » |
 |
Kennedy fought aggressive cancer
By Elizabeth Landau
CNN
Editor's note: Watch a special airing of the HBO documentary "Teddy: In His Own Words" on CNN at 7 tonight ET.
(CNN) -- When cancer invades the brain, the prognosis is usually grim. Despite his treatment at highly regarded medical centers, Edward "Ted" Kennedy, who served as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts for nearly 47 years, died just over a year after his surgery.
Kennedy suffered a seizure May 17, 2008, while walking his dogs at his home in Hyannis Port. Three days later, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said a brain biopsy revealed a tumor, known as a malignant glioma, in the left parietal lobe.
Malignant gliomas are the second-most common cause of death from cancer for people 15 to 44 years old, according to a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The causes of glioma tumors are mysterious. Many patients do not have genetic risk factors, and any connections with lifestyle are not clear, said Dr. Larry Junck, head of the Neuro-Oncology Program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. Junck was not involved in the senator's treatment.
Gliomas do not often spread to other parts of the body, but grow into the brain at their site of origin, Junck said.
Kennedy's doctors did not specify what type of malignant glioma he had. But the majority are glioblastomas, especially in older patients, said Dr. Tara Morrison, a neuro-oncologist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Glioblastoma multiforme, which is the most common primary brain tumor, is aggressive and deadly. Typically diagnosed at age 55, it is not unusual for a glioblastoma to recur after treatment, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Kennedy's treatment -- surgery, followed by radiation and chemotherapy -- would be familiar to many people who have faced cancer. The senator's treatment was "the standard of care for anyone with a malignant glioma," Morrison said. (Morrison also was not involved in Kennedy's treatment.)
The senator underwent surgery at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, in June 2008. The goal of this kind of surgery is to remove as much tumor as possible, Morrison said. See a timeline of Kennedy's life »
Surgery is usually followed by six weeks of radiation. Kennedy wrote in a Newsweek magazine article that he underwent proton-beam therapy, a type of radiation therapy, at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The hospital is one of only six centers in the United States that offers proton radiotherapy, according to the nonprofit National Association for Proton Therapy.
The theory behind proton therapy is that its high-energy particles zone in specifically on the tumor and so do not harm the surrounding healthy tissue as much as the X-ray photons in conventional therapy, said Dr. Donald O'Rourke, associate professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Despite the enthusiasm about this relatively new treatment, no evidence exists that shows proton-beam therapy is better than conventional therapy at getting rid of the tumor, nor does much data support the claim that it does less harm to healthy tissue, O'Rourke said.
During the five weeks of radiation, a patient typically would take an oral chemotherapy drug called Temodar at a low dose every day, Morrison said. Then, a month-long break is followed by at least six months of Temodar at a higher dose.
Treating malignant gliomas is especially hard because they grow in essential parts of the brain, so it's difficult to get every harmful cell out with surgery, Morrison said.
"It's very hard to remove large portions of the brain without causing functional problems in a patient," she said. The cancer cells also infiltrate structures beyond what a scan can show, she said.
The average life expectancy is from 15 to 18 months after surgery, Morrison said. Only about 10 percent of patients are still alive after five years, Junck said.
Researchers are looking at many other treatments for brain tumors.
The drug Avastin, which is approved for patients whose glioblastoma tumors return, is in clinical trials for use after the initial diagnosis.
The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke, where Kennedy received treatment, goes a step further, according to Dr. Henry Friedman, the center's deputy director.
Friedman said the evidence for Avastin's benefit against recurrent tumors is so compelling that he's taken a "leap of faith" and includes the drug in the regimen for newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients whenever possible, even when they don't qualify for clinical trials.
Immunotherapy is also being studied in clinical trials. Researchers take a portion of the tumor and grind it up with white blood cells from the patient, in hopes that the blood cells will learn to fight the cancer cells, Junck said. Then, the blood cells are injected into the patient to combat remaining tumor cells. The evidence from this approach has been inconclusive, he said.
At the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, O'Rourke and colleagues are working on the first noninvasive technique to identify genetic mutations associated with glioblastomas.
They have measured blood flow to the brain with magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. A certain level of blood flow is linked to an underlying gene mutation associated with poor prognosis. Researchers hope to use this as a diagnostic tool and as an aid in targeting therapy to specific genes.
"Perhaps more importantly, when you start treating these patients, if those changes in the MRI go away and it appears to be less aggressive, we may be able to say that our treatment is working," O'Rourke said.
Already the researchers can use the MRI method to see if the patient is responding to treatment, and can make treatment selection based on it. They are still working on using it as a diagnostic tool. O'Rourke expects this method to be widely available with the next year or two.
Further down the line, targeted nanoparticles -- submicroscopic particles coated with special substances that direct them to the tumor site and deliver high doses of chemicals -- may be used in treatments that have fewer side effects than drugs available today.
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory are going to test this approach in brain tumors in mice, but it will be at least five years before it could become available in humans. Read more about nanotechnology's promise for cancer
High-profile people such as Kennedy, who are battling malignant brain tumors, have increased awareness of the condition, O'Rourke said. There has also been a "recent explosion" of technology, such as surgical and imaging techniques, that have helped the survival rate, he said.
"I think in the next 10 years, we're going to see a situation in which we can really classify glioblastomas... and select the appropriate treatments accordingly," he said.
CNN's Caleb Hellerman contributed to this report.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/26/kennedy.brain.cancer.treatments
© 2008 Cable News Network
|
Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
|
|
|
Hermit
Archon
Posts: 4289
Reputation: 8.81
Rate Hermit
Prime example of a practically perfect person
|
|
Re:Kennedy fought aggressive cancer
« Reply #1 on: 2009-08-26 16:20:03 » |
|
Of course, Senator Kennedy not only was a member of one of the wealthiest families in the USA, but also had a superb single payer medical insurance plan that would never have dreamed of cancelling coverage for the pre-existing condition of human aging or suggesting that aggressive treatment would not be cost effective and that he should have accepted palliative care or simply committed suicide to save his insurers money.
Which made his treatment plan somewhat different from that of the general public, even if his prognosis, due to age and cancer type, was pretty terrible.
Time to ask our politicians opposed to a single player national plan when they intend to withdraw from their socialized medicine, deny it to veterans, and instead buy mandated private insurance. And if not, then why they think that anyone else deserves less than they do.
Love
Hermit&Co
|
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
|
|
|
MoEnzyme
Anarch
Gender:
Posts: 2256
Reputation: 3.58
Rate MoEnzyme
infidel lab animal
|
|
Re:Kennedy fought aggressive cancer
« Reply #2 on: 2009-08-26 18:15:38 » |
|
Basically any remotely civilized programs to maintain public health we have, have Kennedy's fingerprints all over it. He also lead a lot of the later political opposition to the Vietnam War which eventually led to its terminiation. He was the primary organizer of the anti-aparteid legislation which ultimately over-rode Ronald Reagan's veto. Of course he also plead guilty to a manslaughter charge, but that's another thing.
ps - I looked it up, he actually plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. Facts which effectively add up to manslaughter. Reckless disregard that kind of stuff. But a rather watered-down plea. (Mo chuckles to himself)
|
I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
|
|
|
|
Logged
