WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- A new "reverse" pancreatic-cancer therapy largely reduces the size of tumors and lowers the risk of recurrence.
Fifty percent of 24 patients in a study at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., responded to the new treatment, which the researchers said is one of the highest response rates ever seen with pancreatic cancer.
Results of the study were published this week in the December issue of the Annals of Surgical Oncology.
Lead researcher J. Marc Pipas said he simply reversed the usual course of treatment for patients with the deadly disease, which involves surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiation.
Instead, Pipas used chemotherapy and radiation in combination first to shrink the tumor and increase the possibility of surgery.
As a result, the researchers said they were able to achieve such large reduction of the tumors' size that a number of patients who previously had been categorized as "borderline" or "inoperable" could have their tumors surgically removed.
"The only way to cure these tumors is to remove them completely," Pipas said. "You try to do something to make sure there is no microscopic disease left. If you can't remove it, the prognosis is poor."
Surgery is the only hope for people with pancreatic cancer, the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The NCI says that of the 32,180 new cases of pancreatic cancer in 2005, 31,800 will die. The five-year survival rate for the disease in currently only 4 percent, but complete removal of the tumor raises those odds to 18 percent to 24 percent.
