Advancing treatment for laryngeal cancer

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

New research suggests that treatment for laryngeal cancer could be better targeted.
There are two approaches to the treatment of laryngeal cancer. The larynx can be removed or the patient can be given chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but not surgery. A team at the University of Michigan has been looking at how these treatments can be combined.

They looked at 97 patients with advanced laryngeal cancer. All were given six days of chemo to start with. Tumors shrank by more than half in three quarters of the patients. These patients were then given a combination of chemo and radiotherapy for the next several weeks. The remaining 25 per cent were immediately considered for surgery.

Three years on, 85 per cent of the group were still alive and 70 per cent had preserved their larynx. Traditional survival rates are only 60 per cent or less. This new approach, of trialling chemo first then assigning treatment depending on response, appears to offer some survival benefit to those with laryngeal cancer.

Source
Journal of Clinical Oncology February 1st 2006