The US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg left hospital Friday, a week after she underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer, the court said in a statement.
Ginsburg was released from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where she had surgery on February 5. She returned to her home in Washington.
During the surgery, Ginsburg had her spleen and part of her pancreas removed, the court added. Doctors found that the 1-centimeter lesion that led to the operation in the first place was in fact benign, although they discovered a previously undetected, smaller tumor that proved to be malignant.
“In searching the entire pancreas, Dr. Murray Brennan identified a previously undetected single, even smaller, tumor which upon examination was found malignant,” the court’s statement said. “All lymph nodes proved negative for cancer, and no metastasis was found,” it added.
Ginsburg’s chances of recovery are pretty good, according to experts in the field. Suresh T. Chari, a specialist in early detection of pancreatic cancer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota told Bloomberg.com that patients diagnosed with Stage 1 pancreatic cancer – Ginsburg’s case – have an 85 percent cure rate.
“This is great news. It’s how you want to detect pancreatic cancer. It could almost be a cure,” Chari said.
Ginsburg will recover at her home in Washington. She will probably begin a six-month course of chemotherapy and may receive radiation treatment before or after, according to Dr. Joseph Kim, a liver, pancreas and stomach surgeon at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte.
Unfortunately, most patients with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed when it’s already too late. Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of the disease, with only one in 10 patients surviving for five years after being diagnosed. In most cases, the cancer is inoperable because it spreads rapidly to other organs, but it was not Ginsburg’s case.
She has already announced her intention to be back on the bench when the court returns for its winter recess on February 23, according to Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg.
Ginsburg, 75, is not at her first battle with life. In 1999 she was diagnosed with colon cancer, a disease she managed to defeat. Whether her colon cancer and pancreatic cancer are linked, no one knows for sure. The connection between the two of them may have another explanation, according to Dr. Joshua Ellenhorn, chief of the division of general and oncologic surgery at the City of Hope National Medical Center. Ginsburg may have a genetic abnormality, specific to some Ashkenazi Jews, which she is, that increases the risk of colon and pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in the United States after lung, colon and breast cancer, according to estimates of the American Cancer Society. There were 38,000 cases of pancreas cancer diagnosed last year, 36,000 of which ended tragically.
