A ‘cap’ on cancer
Headgear boosts survival rate: study
It sounds like science fiction, but a cap-like device that makes electric fields to fight cancer improved survival for the first time in more than a decade for people with deadly brain tumors, final results of a large study suggest.
Many doctors are skeptical of the therapy, called tumortreating fields, and it’s not a cure. It’s also ultra-expensive — $21,000 a month — and isn’t covered by Medicare.
But in the study, more than twice as many patients were alive five years after getting it, plus chemotherapy, than those given just the chemo — 13 percent versus 5 percent.
“It’s out of the box” in terms of how cancer is usually treated, and many doctors don’t understand it or think it can help, said Dr. Roger Stupp, a brain-tumor expert at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
He led the company-sponsored study while at University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland, and gave results Sunday at an American Association for Cancer Research meetingng in Washington.
“You cannot argue with them —— they’re great results,” and unlikelynlikely to be due to a placeboo effect, said one inde-independentnt expert, Dr. Antonio Chiocca,ca, neurosurgery chief at Brighamigham and Women’s Hospitalal in Boston.
The device, called Optune, is madee by Novocure, based in Jersey, an island near England. It’s soldd in the US, Germany, Switzerlandrland and Japan for adults with an aggressive can-cancer calledled glioblastoma multi-multiforme, andand is used with chemo after surgeryurgery and radiation to try to keep these tumors from recurring,ing, as most do.
For at least 18 hours a day, patientsts cover their shavedd scalps with strips of electrodes connected to a small generator. It supposedly works by creating low intensity electric fields that disrupt cell division, killing rapidly dividing cancer cells.
Doctors say many patients won’t try the device because of the trouble involved. Not Joyce Endresen, 52, of Chicago. She has scans every two months to check for cancer and “they’ve all been good.”
“I wear it and wear it proudly. It’s an incredible machine and I’m fine not having hair,” she said.