Word: treatments
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...patient can begin the drastic treatment that will destroy bone marrow unless it is certain that the marrow can be replaced. Some have autologous transplants, in which their own marrow is harvested and returned to them later; others must search for allogeneic transplants from donors--usually relatives. But even close relatives do not always have compatible marrow. In recent years about two-thirds of all patients needing allogeneic transplants have sought unrelated donors...
Breathing on a ventilator, and without a drop of transfused blood flowing in his veins, Jackson gradually began to respond to the treatment. Within four days his blood count had risen significantly. Soon after, he was shaking his head in disbelief and telling his doctors, "If it wasn't for this, I wouldn't be here." It was around then that the first hospital called to ask whether Jackson was dead. With undisguised satisfaction, Shander told them, "He's not only not dead, but he's well and ready for discharge, and he'll soon be about his usual business...
...hope is a rare commodity when it comes to brain cancer. Although successful treatment of tumors like Schuler's malignant astrocytoma can give patients three to five years more, the mean survival period for people with the most common and deadly brain cancers (glioblastomas) is about five months without surgery--and about a year and a half even after successful operations, according to one study. Like Black, neurosurgeons at top cancer centers around the country are working on a variety of experimental techniques that they hope will improve patients' survival. Any one of them may turn...
...Surgeons now use focused beams of X rays to kill cancer tissue, but because these devices rely on radiation to destroy tumors, they can be used only sparingly. And because tumors killed this way take months to die, there is no way for the surgeon to know during treatment if he has got all of the tumor...
Instead, Black began to use radio waves, which cook the cancer to death right away. A few years ago, he developed a treatment that uses an MRI-guided radio-wave probe to reach into a tumor. The procedure can be performed under local anesthesia on an outpatient basis and be repeated as needed. Now Black wants to eliminate even this mildly invasive probe with something he calls the MedArray. The prototype, which Black expects to be ready for trials next year, looks like an MRI with microwave antennas lining the chamber. Using the MRI's images, the MedArray computer maps...