Clinical Advances in 2006


On Friday, the American Society of Clinical Oncology released its overview of this year's major clinical advances in cancer treatment, prevention, and screening. You can read the report on the ASCO patient website. The big advances highlighted include approval of the HPV vaccine which could "actually eliminate cervical cancer in our lifetime"; development of two new therapies for kidney cancer; new targeted therapy for CML patients who develop a resistance to Gleevec; the first advance in nearly half a century in treating head and neck cancers; and, new genetic testing techniques that identify patient specific tumor genes that influence therapy effectivess and choices.

Thanks, interesting link.

Looks like "standard treatment" in the USA is different to the UK anyway. Seems to indicate that surgery is less usual over there, with more reliance on chemo.

By way of comparison, I had surgery followed by 6 weeks of R/T & just 2 chemo session (cisplatin only). Most others seem to have surgery as well, often with R/T & no chemo.

Doesn't look as though their survival rates are any better/worse than ours.