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For Release: November 1, 1999
COMBINED TREATMENT SHOWS PROMISE OF DRAMATICALLY INCREASING SURVIVAL OF SOME HEAD AND NECK CANCER PATIENTS
Adding weekly chemotherapy to radiation therapy dramatically increases survival rates of some patients with advanced head and neck cancer, a new study indicates.
The study of 60 patients found that the overall three-year survival rate of patients who received the drugs carboplatin and taxol plus radiation therapy was 48 percent, says Michael Haas, M.D., a radiation oncology resident at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Haas presented the study at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology annual meeting on November 1 in San Antonio, TX. The patients in the study had locally advanced disease or disease that had spread to nearby lymph nodes.
The standard treatment of these patients is radiation therapy alone, says Mohan Suntharalingam, M.D., vice chair of the department of radiation oncology at the University of Maryland. Historically speaking, the survival rate of these patients is anywhere between 20 and 40 percent at three years so adding chemotherapy represents a dramatic improvement in treatment, says Dr. Suntharalingam.
Patients were able to tolerate the combined treatment, adds Dr. Suntharalingam, with more than 90 percent of the patients completing the outpatient therapy.
Dr. Haas cautions that this is a preliminary study. A larger study in which half of the patients receive the combined therapy and half receive radiation therapy alone needs to be done to confirm these very promising results, he says.
The American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) is the largest radiation oncology society in the world, with more than 5,000 members. As a leading organization in radiation oncology, biology and physics, the society's goals are to advance the scientific base of radiation therapy and to extend the benefits of radiation therapy to those with cancer.
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