Chemotherapy as good as radiotherapy in testicular cancer

By Martin March, | Health | 0 Comments

A clinical study shows that one day treatment with an anticancer drug is as good as radiotherapy for a type of testicular cancer.
For many years, treatment for stage I seminoma, which is a kind of testicular cancer, has consisted of removal of the testicle and three weeks of radiotherapy. The problem is that follow up studies suggest this approach increases the risk of cancer in another organ and of heart problems.

A team at St Bartholomew’s and The London School of Medicine, UK, show that chemotherapy is as effective, and less toxic, for this cancer. They looked at a group of 1477 patients receiving either a single dose of the drug carboplatin or three weeks of radiotherapy. At three years, relapse-free survival was 95.4 per cent in the chemotherapy group and 96.6 per cent in the radiotherapy group. At five years, patients on carboplatin were less likely to develop cancer in the remaining testicle. Further study is needed to see whether the chemotherapy could even replace surgery as a treatment for testicular cancer.