NPR’s “Here and Now” program recently aired an interview with a doctor from MD Anderson. In this fascinating piece, he discusses the idea of giving a few rounds of chemo to ovarian cancer patients to shrink the tumor BEFORE surgery, thereby increasing the chance that all of a womans tumor can be removed. Removing the entire tumor in surgery is the biggest predictor of survival rates. He states that in their study, giving women a few rounds of chemo before surgery increased their chances of getting all the tumor during surgery from 20% to 89%. This is called R-zero, having no residual disease. Being R-zero gives an 80% survival rate, as opposed to those women who have any residual disease after surgery; they have a 20 % survival rate. Click on the link below to listen and learn! (Thanks to Eden Ellman for sharing this article!) hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/11/06/new-cancer-treatments
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 16:01:26 +0000
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