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Asked by sophieb to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 17 Mar 2014.
Question: How have cancer cures improved over the last 10 years or so?
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Anastasia Wass answered on 17 Mar 2014:
There are 3 types of cancer treatment.
Surgery – try to remove the tumour.
Chemotherapy – drugs which travel round your body and kill any cancer cells.
Radiotherapy – radiation which targets and kills cancer cells.
All of these treatments have got alot more specific over the last ten years. Radiation can now be applied alot more specifically so it’s only directed at the diseased part of the body.
More chemotherapy drugs have been discovered and existing ones have been made more specific so they’re better at only killing cancer cells.
Surgery’s got less invasive, smaller cuts can be made so patients heal faster.
All of these improvements have helped reduce side effects of cancer treatment and improve the time it takes patients to recover.
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Amar Joshi answered on 17 Mar 2014:
Hi Sophie,
Ana covers the key improvements in treatment but one overlooked area is detection. Screening and detection has vastly improved over the last 10 years or so. One of the most important factors in the outcome of cancer is the stage of cancer when it is found. If it has spread the outcome is not as good as when is is confined to a specific organ.
Even if it hasn’t spread a new piece of technology is going into clinics to help. Surgeons use a special hot wand to cut out tumours and seal the blood vessels at the same time. The new tool analyses the gases released from this to make sure the surgeon has removed all the tumour. This is making surgery even better than it already is.
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Matthew Lam answered on 17 Mar 2014:
There have been some amazing developments in the way we treat cancer which have all been covered pretty well by the others.
As we have learnt more and more about the biology of the disease, we have been able to develop more ‘targeted treatments’. These drugs attack cancer cells and leave normal cells untouched, meaning that treatment is more effective and patients experience fewer side effects.
The more we find out about the specific characteristics that make cancer cells the way they are the better our treatments will be. We have come a long way in the past 10 years but there is still a lot to do and some incredible new treatments are on the horizon.
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Andrea Hanvey answered on 17 Mar 2014:
I think some of the improvements in cancer treatment in the last 10 years are amazing. For example a vaccine has now been developed against certain common strains of the Human papilloma virus (HPV), this in most recent research has been found to be affective against developing cervical cancer. This could protect thousands of women against cervical cancer in the future.
The new iknife is currently being trialled in London. This is a surgical knife that works with electrical current to cut through tissue. The I knife is attached to a mass spectrometer that has been programmed to identify what type of tissue the surgeon is cutting through in real time. This wil allow surgeons to know if they have cut all the tumour out.
There’s also improvements in diagnosis the bowel screening programme was implemented in the last 10 years. Simple test allows scientists to identify if a patient should go on to have further investigations. This is helping catch cancer early!
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Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 18 Mar 2014:
The others have given a good overview of how treatments have been improved so I just wanted to add that over the ten years from 2001 – 2011 deaths from cancer have decreased by about 10%, even though the overall number of people being diagnosed with cancer has increased.
This shows that the newer types of treatment are making a big difference to the number of people who can be cured.
Comments
sophieb commented on :
Thanks, really helpful!