CHICAGO, Ill. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – Each year, 40,000 people are diagnosed with rare cancers. Even though 40,000 doesn’t seem like a lot compared to the almost two million people diagnosed with cancer each year, rare cancers account for 25 percent of all cancer deaths. Now, highly personalized treatments are being created to save one life at a time, Thyroid cancer.
Vivian Panou makes the most of each day for her two girls, Katerina and Aria, all while battling an extremely rare form of thyroid cancer.
She recalls when she discovered something was wrong.
“I touched my throat, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! What is that?’ It felt like a golf ball, and I freaked out,” Vivian tells Ivanhoe.
Surgery, chemo, and radiation all helped for a little while, but then she received some bad news from her doctor.
“I said, ‘Doctor, please tell me, where has the cancer gone and how are we gonna get rid of it?’ and he just dropped his arms. He’s like, ‘Vivian, where hasn’t it gone? It’s gone everywhere,” Vivian expresses.
Medical oncologist at the Lurie Cancer Center at Northwestern Medicine, Dr. Young Kwang Chae, MD, explains to Ivanhoe, “She had very aggressive cancer.”
Dr. Chae finds targeted therapies for hard-to-treat cases. He tried a drug that had never been used before on Vivian’s type of cancer.
“We tailor our therapies based on the patient’s genomic profile,” Dr. Chae further explains.
Five days after the first infusion, Vivian’s cancer had dramatically reduced.
Dr. Chae says, “We were seeing that her pain disappeared within, I would say, days.”
Using a highly personalized developmental therapy to hopefully give Vivian the extra days, even years, she’s so desperately looking forward to.
“I feel like the treatment I’m getting has been specially crafted just for me because they wanna make sure that I stick around for my girls,” Vivian expresses.
Today, Vivian remains on the treatment plan and Dr. Chae continues to monitor her progress and look for more ways to keep her cancer controlled.
You will find more hospitals using developmental therapy teams to create personalized treatments for their patients, taking personalized care to a new level.
Contributors to this news report include: Marsha Lewis, Producer; Roque Correa, Videographer & Editor.
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Sources:
https://www.cancer.gov/pediatric-adult-rare-tumor/rare-tumors/about-rare-cancers
MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS
RESEARCH SUMMARY
TOPIC: TARGETED TREATMENT FOR THYROID CANCER: SAVING ONE LIFE AT A TIME
REPORT: MB #5093
BACKGROUND: About 40,000 people each year are diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Between one and two percent of people will get a form of thyroid cancer in their lifetime, and it affects women three times more than men. It is most common after the age of 30. The thyroid cancer death rate saw a slight increase from 2009 to 2018 but has become more stable in recent years. There are about 43,800 new cases of thyroid cancer in the most recent estimates with about 2,230 deaths from thyroid cancer.
(Sources: https://www.cancer.gov/pediatric-adult-rare-tumor/rare-tumors/about-rare-cancers https://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/thyroid-cancer https://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroid-cancer/about/key-statistics.html)
DIAGNOSING: Thyroid cancer is diagnosed a few different ways: from an image test, an ultrasound or a radioiodine scan. Image testing is done to help find the areas that may be cancer, how far the cancer spread and to see if treatments are working. Ultrasound diagnosing helps determine if a thyroid nodule is solid or filled with fluids as solid nodules are likely to be cancer. It can be used to check the numbers and size of nodules as well to determine if any lymph nodes nearby are affected. Radioiodine scans are used to determine if a lump in the neck might be thyroid cancer.
(Source: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroid-cancer/detection-diagnosis-staging/how-diagnosed.html )
NEW TECHNOLOGY: One piece of new technology in treating Thyroid Cancer is the LigaSure, The LigaSure electrothermal vessel allows access to the thyroid for improved cosmetic outcomes and potentially improve the view when surgery is being performed. It helps locate sentinel lymph nodes. This procedure, in conjunction with ultrasound, helps improve detection of the disease and is now becoming more widespread.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS REPORT, PLEASE CONTACT:
Megan McCann
(312) 926-5900
If this story or any other Ivanhoe story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Marjorie Bekaert Thomas at mthomas@ivanhoe.com
