Massive Chemo Dose Targets Cancerous Liver

[Hissyspit]

Source: Associated Press

Massive chemo dose targets cancerous liver
By LAURAN NEERGAARD (AP Medical Writer)
From Associated Press
March 31, 2009 3:41 AM EDT
WASHINGTON - Bill Darker grinned as he headed into the operating room for a dramatic experiment: A super-high dose of chemotherapy dripped directly into his cancer-ridden liver, 10 times more than patients normally can tolerate. Not to fear. Working through small puncture holes, doctors sealed off Darker's liver and washed most of the toxic medication from his blood so it didn't poison the rest of his body.

It's a rigorous effort to fight a notorious killer, cancer that has spread to the liver from elsewhere in the body and left patients with few options and little time.

- snip -

Three times, so far, he has flown from his home in Imperial Beach, Calif., to the National Institutes of Health in suburban Washington to repeat the experimental therapy. Before his last round, Darker's liver tumors had shrunk by about a third.

Now a study at NIH and 10 other hospitals nationwide aims to show whether that kind of shrinkage makes enough of a difference in the length and quality of recipients' lives, and is safe enough, for Food and Drug Administration approval to treat eye or skin melanoma that spreads to the liver.

Read more: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20090330/49d1a350_3421_13345200903311536265045

[tomm2thumbs]

1. amazing - before you know it, they'll have little bags they put around the organ lined with chemo

we've come a long way!

[Hubert Flottz]

2. Three of my friends have cancer right now and two

people in my family have it now too.

It's a sad time for me. I've also lost two of my good friends in the past two years to cancer.

I wish we could take the money the DOD or the "War On Drugs" wastes in one year and spend it on finding a cure for cancer.