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| By
Geri Clark |
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NEW ORLEANS – A combination of
surgery, radiation and chemotherapy significantly increases survival
in patients with stomach cancer compared to surgery alone, and
should become the new standard of care for these people, said
experts at the 36th Annual Meeting of the American Society for
Clinical Oncology here.
In a study carried out by the
Southwest Oncology Group, John Macdonald, M.D., of St. Vincent’s
Cancer Center in New York and his colleagues treated 556 patients
with stomach cancer in a range of stages; in 85 percent of the
patients cancer had spread to their lymph nodes.
Half of
the patients had surgery to remove their cancer (the current
standard of care for stomach cancer) but no further treatment. The
other half had surgery followed by a combination of chemotherapy
(with the drugs 5-FU and leucovorin) and radiation.
Three
years after the start of the study, 49 percent of the patients who
were given chemotherapy plus radiation were still alive, compared
with 32 percent of patients who had surgery alone. The three-year
overall survival was also better in the chemoradiation group – 52
percent versus 41 percent of the surgery-only patients. And after
five years, 50 percent of the patients who got the extra treatment
were still alive, compared to 40 percent of the surgery group.
In the United States, 21,900 new cases of stomach cancer
were diagnosed in 1999 and 13,500 people died of the disease. The
five-year survival for patients with node-positive stomach cancer is
only 20 percent because by the time the cancer is diagnosed, it has
usually already spread within the stomach and to other parts of the
body, where it continues to grow.
“We really don’t have any
good options for this disease,” said Macdonald. “This combination
therapy increases the survival rate significantly and should become
the standard of care for patients with stomach cancer who are at
high risk of relapse and death.”
The
combination of chemotherapy and radiation added to surgery is
designed to treat the cancer both in the stomach (by surgery and
radiation) and at other parts of the body it may have spread to
(with chemotherapy).
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