Treatment
Generally the approach is to bring a cancer into remission first (absence of symptoms) and then try to eradicate the remaining cells (MRD). Often the treatments needed to eradicate MRD differ from those used initially. This is an area of much research.
It seems a sensible idea to aim to reduce or eradicate MRD. What is needed is evidence on which is the best method, and how well it works. This is emerging. Treatments which specifically target MRD can include:
- intensive conventional treatment with more drugs, or a different combination of drugs
- stem cell transplant, e.g. marrow transplant. This allows more intensive chemotherapy to be given, and in addition the transplanted bone marrow may help eradicate the minimal residual disease
- immunotherapy
- monitoring the patient carefully for early signs of relapse. This is an area of active research in several countries.
- treatment with monoclonal antibodies which target cancer cells
- cancer vaccines
Read more about this topic: Minimal Residual Disease
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Ambivalence reaches the level of schizophrenia in our treatment of violence among the young. Parents do not encourage violence, but neither do they take up arms against the industries which encourage it. Parents hide their eyes from the books and comics, slasher films, videos and lyrics which form the texture of an adolescent culture. While all successful societies have inhibited instinct, ours encourages it. Or at least we profess ourselves powerless to interfere with it.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)