Word: cancers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That's why cancer advocates and the insurance industry were so anxiously awaiting last week's release of the most definitive studies yet undertaken to evaluate the treatment. The news, on its face, was not good. Transplant therapy, the studies suggest, may not improve survival odds any more than traditional therapy. The findings, however, are preliminary, and further study may overturn them altogether. By week's end, all that was certain was that an already heated debate would get hotter still and that patients who want the therapy are not giving up hope. "With this treatment," says Geisbush, "at least...
...Battling cancer with immune-system transplants is a straightforward--if searing--procedure. Used only with the most lethal cancers, it involves flooding the body with toxic chemotherapy drugs in an effort to overwhelm the malignancy. While the drugs do kill cancer cells, they also destroy most of the disease-fighting cells in the immune system. That's why doctors harvest marrow cells from the bones or stem cells from the bloodstream--both of which give rise to new immune cells--before they begin chemotherapy. When the treatment is done, these cells are reinfused into the body, in the hope that...
Some insurers, however, had long dug in their heels over transplant therapy, and last week's announcement may make them dig deeper still. The five new studies looked at two types of breast cancer: high-risk cases, in which the disease has spread to 10 or more lymph nodes; and metastatic cases, in which it's migrated even further. Of the three studies that focused on high-risk cases--surveying a total of 1,462 breast-cancer patients--only one found a statistically significant advantage for transplant therapy. The two studies that focused on metastatic disease showed no real advantage...
...insurers will react to all this is unclear. US Healthcare (now merged with Aetna) and some Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans helped bankroll three of the recent studies, an act of good corporate citizenship that seemed to signal a willingness to keep paying for transplant treatments in breast-cancer cases. A doctor working with Kaiser-Permanente, the nation's largest HMO, offers more direct reassurance. "It will be up to the doctor and the patient," predicts oncologist Louis Fehrenbacher...
...space. On learning that she had won the Pulitzer Prize for her play, Wit, the Atlanta kindergarten teacher's immediate response was to keep cleaning her classroom. Edson wrote Wit in 1991, when she was working at a bicycle shop. The unsentimental story of a woman dying of ovarian cancer wended its way through various regional theaters before ending up off-Broadway six months ago. Edson, 37, says she has no firm plans to write another play and remains dedicated to her current work. She did celebrate: just champagne and pizza, though. After all, she said, "it [was] a school...