July 20, 2017
By Susan Scutti
...A pathologist (click here) was in the operating room during the procedure, a minimally invasive craniotomy with an eyebrow incision, said his doctor, who added that the surgery lasted about three to four hours. Post-surgical brain scans show the tissue causing concern has been completely removed....
That is magnificent work. It is a primary glioblastoma. That is not related to the skin cancer.
...Of the estimated 17,000 primary brain tumors (click here) diagnosed in the US each year, approximately 60% are gliomas.1,2 Glioblastoma (GB), or grade IV astrocytoma, is the most aggressive of primary tumors of the brain for which no cure is available.1,3 Management remains palliative and includes surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. With optimal treatment, patients with GBs have a median survival of less than one year.1 About 2% of patients survive three years.4 Previously reported long-term survivors (LTSs) of GB may have been patients who actually harbored other low-grade gliomas.5 The overall prognosis for GB has changed little since the 1980s, despite major improvements in neuroimaging, neurosurgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy techniques....
There are people that have beat this cancer and are alive to tell about it.
...We found that patient survival depends on the following clinical and biologic parameters: tumor size and location, treatment, age at presentation, Karnofsky performance score (KPS) at presentation, histologic findings, and molecular genetic factors....
Unless Senator McCain's doctors state otherwise, I think he has a good chance at life yet.
