Some very encouraging results have been found by a study conducted at the University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois. The scientists involved in the study discovered a focused radiation based therapy that proved extremely successful with some patients.

The study included people suffering from stage IV cancer, presenting a maximum of five sites of the disease and with tumors with diameters bigger than 10 cm. The patients went through three sessions of precisely targeted radiation, which focused on each tumor.

The operation was started back in November 2004 and ended in February 2008. During this time, a good percentage of the patients presented a complete response for at least one of the tumor sites; from the total of 56 tumors the researchers applied the treatment on, 31 have been completely removed.

The patients’ state was stable throughout the treatment; as the authors noted, they only experienced limited difficulty." Apart from some fatigue which all of them had, serious side effects were only found in a few isolated cases.

Dr. Ralph Weichselbaum, a professor of radiation and cellular oncology and the study's senior author, said the results were encouraging, especially with certain long-term survivors who presented stage IV cancers that had reached distant sites.
The researchers recommend the technique after chemotherapy as well, when the drugs would have already eliminated the smaller tumors, leaving only the large ones.

You can find more detailed information on the study in the August 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.