Brain & Spine Surgery
Researchers at the University of Calgary say a new treatment plan for an aggressive brain cancer called glioblastoma is showing promise.
A combination of two drugs increased the lifespan of animals in test trials by 30 per cent, according to researchers at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute.
CHICAGO – Patients diagnosed with a mutant type of astrocytic glioma should have aggressive surgery to resect as much tumor as possible because these individuals may be able to achieve long-term survival, researchers said here.
In patients identified with the IDH1-mutation and who had less than 2 cc of residual tumor, survival was greater than 95% over nearly 17 years, compared with a survival of 20% among patients with a larger residual tumor (P=0.01), said Daniel Cahill, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Harvard.
“This is personalized surgery for these patients,” Cahill told MedPage Today at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.… [Continue Reading]