| More than 6 months of hormone therapy doesn't help prostate cancer patients live longer | | Posted Monday, November 06, 2006 3:05:12 AM by Blog57 Team | | Prostate cancer patients treated with either radiation or surgery who use hormone therapy for longer than six months do not survive any longer than patients who use the treatment for a shorter amount of time, according to a study presented November 5, 2006, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology's 48th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. "Many patients with high risk prostate cancer are treated with two or more years of hormone therapy based on studies performed over a decade ago," said Cliff Robinson, M.D., lead author of the study and a radiation oncologist at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. "Our study's findings suggest that treating current patients with shorter-term hormone therapy may not only be equally effective, but also improve their quality of life, due to a lesser degree of treatment side effects." The authors also found that patients receiving longer than six months of hormone therapy were twice as likely to die as patients who use the treatment for a shorter amount of time.... | |
| |
| | | New radiation technology targets doses to cancerous areas | | Posted Saturday, August 26, 2006 11:07:14 PM by Blog57 Team | | Just before Julie Sadecky had a recent radiation treatment, a follow-up therapy for uterine cancer, her medical team at West Penn Hospital used cutting-edge technology to take a CT scan. Guided by a computer analysis of the image and earlier scans, the team changed her body position to better direct radiation to the targeted area. The new technology, known as Image-Guided Radiation Therapy, or IGRT, is helping doctors to deliver an optimal dose of radiation to cancerous areas while reducing the risk to healthy tissues, said Dr. David Parda, director of the West Penn Allegheny Health System's radiation oncology network. Dr. Parda, chairman of radiation oncology at Allegheny General Hospital, and other experts said IGRT complements another advanced treatment, intensity-modulated radiation therapy, or IMRT.... | |
| |
| | | Bones rendered more vulnerable following radiation therapy | | Posted Tuesday, July 25, 2006 4:58:27 PM by Blog57 Team | | Researchers have found that mice who were given one therapeutic dose of radiation equal to that received by human cancer patients, lost as much as 39 percent of the spongy portion of their inner bone. The loss according to the researchers meant their inner bone's weight-bearing connections was reduced by up to 64 percent. Lead researcher Ted A. Bateman, a bioengineer at Clemson University who studies bone biomechanics,says they were really surprised at the extent of bone loss as it occurred after much lower doses of radiation than expected. Bateman says that while the results of the mouse study cannot be directly applied to humans, it does raise concerns about radiation exposure. He says the discovery could have implications for cancer patients receiving radiation therapy and the radiation exposure astronauts are exposed to on long space flights.... | |
| |
| |
|
|
