HOW MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS IN CHEMOTHERAPY HAVE COME ABOUT – INTRODUCTION
Prior to the early 1960s, chemotherapy was in its infancy and the drugs were used one at a time. A few types of cancer were found to be very sensitive to particular drugs. Some cancers were even cured—for example, the rare cancer of women called choriocarcinoma could be completely cured by the drug methotrexate. As there was previously no effective treatment for these cancers, it was very obvious that the new treatment was a major improvement!
In the early 1960s, a group of doctors from the United States reported using a revolutionary new technique. They combined high doses of four different chemotherapy drugs (mustine, vincristine, procarbazine and prednisone) to produce a treatment that produced remissions in the majority of patients with Hodgkin’s disease. Prior to this, extensive Hodgkin’s disease was fatal within a few months. Now patients were living for years and, in fact, many of them later proved to be completely cured. The improvement in results was so great and significant that no special research techniques were needed to prove it.
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Posted by admin on May 15th, 2009 :: Filed under Cancer
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