Posted: Jun 17, 2012 7:01 pm
Note that I do not know this for certain. However, bald assertions that cancers, or cancers of certain kinds can be treated with chemotherapy if caught early enough, strike me as a bit vapid. I don't know what evidence, if any, there are.
unreal wrong......
Leukemia has a very high survival rate in kids and outright cures....some do die of chemo tho.....
Why is the survival rate for leukaemia so high? Because it has had a lot of research thrown at it over the past decades and they have come to some hard conclusions – treat it heavily and treat it for a long time. Many cancer treatments can be a six to twelve month protocol, leukaemia protocols can go for as long as three years. And it is tough. When leukaemia is first diagnosed there is no mucking around, before you know it you will be on an oncology ward (sometimes the child is so sick they are admitted into an intensive care unit) and chemotherapy is started immediately. The idea with the first stage of leukaemia treatment is to induce remission in the child. Once remission is reached the child can move onto the next stage of treatment.
How does the leukaemia protocol work? I was going to type out a more simplified version of a leukaemia treatment protocol but in all honesty there is no way to simplify it. It is a very complicated treatment regime. There are many lumber punctures, injecting drugs into the spinal fluid (intrathecal treatment), and a whole list of chemotherapy drugs like methotrexate, vincristine, aspariginase, cyclophosphamide, thioguanine, doxorubicin, mercaptopurine, dexamethasone, prendnisone and many more. For those wanting more information the following link will show you how complex the treatment protocol is http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/ ... onal/page5
In order to ensure the leukaemia does not return the treatment protocol continues for two to three (very long) years, unfortunately it is usually longer in boys.
Sadly this treatment protocol can be deadly for the child. Some do not survive. They catch one or more infections that their bodies cannot fight. A common cold can be deadly. There is also the risk of toxicity, some children cannot handle that many different drugs in their system and their body reacts accordingly.
How good does all of that sound? It does not sound good at all. I think it sounds just as bad as all the other cancer treatment protocols. I think next time you hear this rumour you should quash it. All childhood cancer is bad, even if the odds appear good.
and in adults for the type of cancer I had the survival rate is very good....part of the problem is the new treatments are much better but the stats are not caught up..
Prognosis
Survival rates for NHL vary widely, depending on the lymphoma type, stage, age of the patient, and other variables. According to the American Cancer Society, the overall 5-year relative survival rate for patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is 63% and the 10-year relative survival rate is 51%. (The relative survival rate estimates the likelihood that a patient will survive a certain number years after diagnosis. It is calculated to exclude the likelihood of death from diseases other than the cancer.)
http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides ... nosis.html
There are literally hundreds of different cancers and each has stages.....caught early most cancers can be dealt with - left alone in most cases you will die - tho sometimes not for years.
The related form to mine has an even higher rate....
Hodgkin's lymphoma may be treated with radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, with the choice of treatment depending on the age and sex of the patient and the stage, bulk, and histological subtype of the disease. The disease occurrence shows two peaks: the first in young adulthood (age 15–35) and the second in those over 55 years old.[3]
The overall 5-year relative survival for 2001-2007 from 17 SEER geographic areas was 83.9%.
For skin cancers the survival rate is very high as well.
HOW EFFECTIVE IS TOPICAL CHEMOTHERAPY?
Topical chemotherapy response can be unpredicatable, especially with imiquimod. In some cases no response would occur - no skin reaction and no cancer eradication. Even with skin reaction, cure is not guaranteed. Careful follow-up with the physician and occasionally biopsies are needed after completion of topical chemotherapy. Overall, for properly selected skin cancers, the cure rate can be 80-90%.
Bladder cancer
In a new study splitting 360 patients into groups receiving radiation alone or radiation plus chemotherapy, British researchers found that those undergoing combined therapies had a 67 percent rate of local disease-free survival after two years, compared with 54 percent in the radiation group. Five-year overall survival rates were 48 percent in the chemo-radiation group, compared with 35 percent in the radiation-only group.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-c ... ancer.html
Each is different, each patient is different..stop spreading unfounded and unsupported crap.
Chemo therapy is complex and the variety of treatments and effectiveness is moving forward rapidly.
What would kill two decades ago most often will now most often be cured.
Some types of cancer tho are a death sentence in nearly all cases tho that may take years to unfold.
Chemo is one tool in a wide arsenal and cancer is not one thing - it has many many forms.
If you feel a lump in your groin and avoid chemo and listen to the idjits on the web you will die and be up for a Darwin award. It's really quite simple.
Steve Jobs had a quite easily cured cancer.....he waited and tried the stupid stuff.....then it was too late and he died a miserable death ....completely unnecessary but of his own doing.
Some patients will die of chemo for a variety of reasons.....it's rare.....the cancers being treated would however kill them in due course.
I suggest very strongly if there is a history of cancer in your family you keep checked and at certain ages you do the early detection checks appropriate.