United States: New research indicates that patients with stage-three and stage-four esophageal cancers should receive chemotherapy prior to as well as after surgery to remove tumors.
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According to Dr Jennifer Tseng, a prominent researcher who works at the Boston Medical Center, “There is considerable disagreement as to whether giving all adjuvant [chemo] therapy upfront versus ‘sandwich’ adjuvant therapy before and after surgery is the better standard of care” while talking about those whose tumors could be removed with the help of surgery.
She added, “This randomized clinical trial from Europe answers that question for patients similar to those enrolled in the trial: preoperative plus postoperative chemotherapy provides better outcomes,” as US News reported.
The study findings were made public at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), held in Chicago on Monday.
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The American Cancer Society also captured information that shows that for this year, over 22,000 people in America will be diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and over 16,000 people will die from the disease. It is anKnuckle that esophageal cancer rates are higher among men than women.
Issues regarding esophageal cancer management
One of the key issues that have been controversial regarding esophageal cancer management is the time it takes before treatment with chemotherapy.
A new trial was conducted by Dr. Jens Hoeppner of the University of Bielefeld based in Detmold, Germany. His team concentrated on 371 individuals with esophageal cancers that had not metastasized but displayed large sized tumours that qualified them as having advanced illness.
In this case, all the patients were operated with the aim of partly resecting the tumor.
Half of the patients underwent only chemo regimens prior to surgery; the other half underwent Chemo pre-operatively and post-operatively.
The study undertook examination for more than four and a half years on average post-surgery, in which the scientists found that fewer patients died in the “before-and-after” arm of the trial versus the “before-only” arm — 3.2 percent versus 5.6 percent, respectively.
At the three-year mark, patients who’d gotten Chemo before and after surgery had a 30 percent lower risk of dying than those who only got Chemo before, the researchers said.
Complete regression of the original esophageal tumor was also more likely in the before-and-after group.
After three years of having received the treatment, patients who underwent chemotherapy both before and after their surgery were 30 percent less likely to die than those who had chemotherapy only before surgery, the researchers found.
Before-and-after comparison of imagery experience also generally revealed a higher likelihood of complete regression of the initial esophageal tumor.
Patients who got the Chemo twice lived an average of thirteen and half years; those who only received Chemo before surgery had an average survival of roughly three years.