CT scans may help cancer patients
Source: Agencies |
December 3, 2009, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
DOCTORS may be able to use an advanced X-ray called a CT scan to see whether patients with advanced colorectal cancer are responding to treatment with Avastin and chemotherapy, United States researchers said on Tuesday.
Currently, there are no tools besides surgery to see if people with advanced colorectal cancer that has spread to the liver are responding to treatment with chemotherapy and Roche unit Genentech's cancer drug Avastin.
And many patients with this advanced form of cancer are poor candidates for surgery.
"For the patient, you would have to wait for the tumor to resurface to have a sense for whether the treatment was working," Dr Jean-Nicolas Vauthey of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center said.
"We had no good tool to evaluate response," said Vauthey, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
He said the findings are preliminary and need to be confirmed in a much larger study, but they do suggest CT scans might help doctors offer more personalized treatment for their patients.
Vauthey, a surgeon, said most doctors rely on tumor shrinkage to see if patients are responding to treatment, but he said that is not always a good indicator of response.
In surgery patients, doctors could tell by examining changes in the size and structure of tumors whether a patient was responding to the drug combination - the standard of care for most patients with advanced colorectal cancer - and had a good chance at survival.
Working with radiology specialists, the team applied some of these same characteristics to develop screening characteristics for CT scans.
Currently, there are no tools besides surgery to see if people with advanced colorectal cancer that has spread to the liver are responding to treatment with chemotherapy and Roche unit Genentech's cancer drug Avastin.
And many patients with this advanced form of cancer are poor candidates for surgery.
"For the patient, you would have to wait for the tumor to resurface to have a sense for whether the treatment was working," Dr Jean-Nicolas Vauthey of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center said.
"We had no good tool to evaluate response," said Vauthey, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
He said the findings are preliminary and need to be confirmed in a much larger study, but they do suggest CT scans might help doctors offer more personalized treatment for their patients.
Vauthey, a surgeon, said most doctors rely on tumor shrinkage to see if patients are responding to treatment, but he said that is not always a good indicator of response.
In surgery patients, doctors could tell by examining changes in the size and structure of tumors whether a patient was responding to the drug combination - the standard of care for most patients with advanced colorectal cancer - and had a good chance at survival.
Working with radiology specialists, the team applied some of these same characteristics to develop screening characteristics for CT scans.
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