Dr. Weeks’ Comment: This is why they call it “practicing” medicine. Doctors can kill patients with impunity until eventually a committee decides they need to stop it. Well intentions are fine. But doctors need to be very very careful when their treatment may prove more toxic than the illness. Of course you and I are wondering “What took them so long????” But let’s remember that the brain is 60% fat/oil/lipid. People with brain cancer need to “change their oil” Good oil in kicks bad oil out. The human body is wise enough to trade up. Give it organic non-GMO whole crushed unadulterated seed oils and the human body will kick out oxidized trans-fatty acids and health itself. Eat the seeds!
Adjuvant Whole-Brain Radiotherapy: End of an Era?
Nancy A. Melville
May 03, 2016
CHICAGO ”” New details from a clinical trial showing negative effects of whole-brain radiotherapy combined with stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) in the treatment of brain cancer ”” and no improvement in overall survival ”” further call into question the use of the approach in the treatment of patients with one to three brain metastases.
“We think this study represents the end of an era in neuro-oncology,” presenter Anthony L. Asher, MD, a neurosurgeon with the Department of Neurological Surgery at Carolina Neurosurgery and Spine Associates, Charlotte, North Carolina, told Medscape Medical News.
“The number one goal of cancer therapy is to help patients live longer and better, and if we can’t help them live longer, then we absolutely have to help them live better ”” it’s our solemn oath not to worsen their quality of life,” he said.
In a talk presented here at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) 84th Annual Meeting, Dr Asher presented updated data from N0574, a clinical trial of 213 patients with one to three brain metastases who were randomly assigned to stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) alone or radiosurgery combined with whole-brain radiotherapy.
As first reported at the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology Meeting, the trial results at 3 months showed significantly greater cognitive deterioration in the whole-brain radiotherapy group compared with radiosurgery alone (91.7% vs 63.5%; P < .007). The greater deterioration in the whole-brain radiotherapy group included the specific domains of immediate memory (30.4% vs 8.2%; P = .004), delayed memory (51.1% vs 19.7%; P .001), and verbal fluency (18.6% vs 1.9%; P = .010). Whole-brain radiotherapy treatment was also associated with greater deterioration of quality-of-life measures, including in functional well-being (P = .006) and overall quality of life (P = .001). Consistent with previous studies that have supported its continued use, whole-brain radiotherapy did show greater improvement in intracranial tumor control at 3 months, with improvement of 93.7% vs 75.3% with SRS alone (P < .001). Importantly, however, the difference in median overall survival (OS) between the two groups was not statistically significant, with OS of 7.4 months for whole-brain radiotherapy and 10.4 months for radiosurgery alone (hazard ratio, 1.02; P = .92). To read the rest of the article CLICK HERE