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:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts.... The question “Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?” should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“[17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child’s duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)