Thursday 4 October 2012

Adding chemo improves outcomes from bladder cancer radiation

British researchers have found that combining radiation with 2 chemotherapy drugs helped bladder cancer patients live longer than those who had radiation alone. In the study, 360 people with muscle-invasive bladder cancer were randomly assigned to radiation alone, or radiation with the chemo drugs fluorouracil and mitomycin. Most of the patients had their bladder tumors removed first. In the chemo-radiation group, 48% of the patients lived at least 5 years, as compared with 35% in the group treated with radiation alone. In addition, 67% of those in the radiation-chemo group had no evidence of cancer in their bladder after 2 years, compared to 54% in the radiation-only group. Read more here.

Study mentioned: James ND, et al. Radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy in muscle-invasive bladder cancer. N Engl J Med. 2012 Apr 19;366(16):1477-88. PMID: 22512481

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