New Cancer Cure Removes Some Chemo and Saves Lives

This sounds interesting, a new treatment for cancer patients that does not include chemotherapy. One thing living in this era of amazing technical changes is that medicine is improving on nearly a daily basis. Diagnosis that 20 years ago would have been a death sentence at worst or a painful and trying treatment now are being cured at a remarkable rate.

So while we complain about the cost of health care we must remember that the efficacy of the healthcare these days is improving dramatically.

Trials have shown that hormone therapy drugs are at least as effective as chemotherapy in women under 40 – but with fewer side effects. It means younger cancer patients could still be able to have children.

Experts believe up to 5,500 women each year who develop breast cancer before the menopause would benefit from drugs such as Zoladex, which is given once a month as an implant under the skin of the stomach. The drugs work in cancers that are hormonesensitive, meaning they are stimulated by oestrogen. Around two-thirds of cancers in younger women are hormone-sensitive.

The latest British trials, reported today in The Lancet, also showed that the drugs can boost the effects of both chemotherapy or tamoxifen. Such double treatment cut the recurrence of cancer by nearly 13 per cent and reduced the death rate by 15 per cent. via the Daily Mail.