So again my friends and colleagues in radiation oncology recommended an inferior treatment for a patient with advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma. This time, is a young female with residual disease status post targeted therapy with Brentuximab. Radiation is offered to mediastinal nodes.
Well, it just reminded me of my cousin who called my clinic a few years ago, and asked if I recall her. I said no, I do not remember I had a cousin with that name. ( She said she saw me last when I was 2 years old), and said I was a very hyper kid!!! No wonder…but here is how she found me again she was looking at my publications where I talk about radiation causing harm on stem cell levels ( through WNT pathways) and causing EMT. Further she found me as she was exactly working on the same field at Harvard, wnt pathway!! And referred me to her publication talking about the harms this can cause.
She became an active board member and continues to work at Harvard to investigate what I just said. Here in this case, I had to refer my patient to following study, so she can share this with her extremely educated ( sarcastic) oncologist:
http://cancer.unm.edu/patients/comprehensive-care/radiation-therapy/
In 1989, researchers in France began a clinical trial to compare chemotherapy alone with chemotherapy plus radiation therapy for treatment of patients with advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma. They randomly allocated 559 patients with advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma to receive chemotherapy plus total nodal irradiation (radiation therapy to lymph nodes in the chest, neck and abdomen) or chemotherapy alone. The 5-year survival without recurrence was 74% for patients who were treated with chemotherapy alone and 79% for those who were treated with chemotherapy plus radiation. Overall survival at 5 years was 94% for patients receiving chemotherapy alone and 78% for patients receiving chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
