Terminal cancer patients-final dys w/radiation therapy that does nothing

[Guest guest]

Terminal cancer

patients spend final days suffering from radiation therapy that does

nothing

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 by: S. L. Baker, features writer

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.naturalnews.com/028764_cancer_patients_radiation.html

 

 

NaturalNews) A new analysis just published in

the journal Cancer concludes that a significant proportion of

terminally ill cancer patients spend most of their final days and weeks

subjected to grueling radiation therapy (radiotherapy). What

makes this extra heartbreaking and downright outrageous is that

irradiating dying cancer patients does absolutely nothing for the vast

majority -- except to cause more end-of-life suffering and to keep

countless people in the hospital, instead of allowing them to die at

home.

 

When mainstream medicine runs out of treatments to try for long-term

cancer control, so-called palliative radiotherapy is often ordered for

end-stage cancer patients. The rationale? It's supposed to control

cancer-related pain and other symptoms by reducing the number of cancer

cells. That, in theory, can relieve pressure and bleeding and give

patients a better quality of life in their final months and days.

 

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Finally, in their

new paper, Germany researchers have documented just how dismal

the results of palliative radiotherapy really are.

 

Stephan Gripp, MD, of the University Hospital in Dusseldorf, Germany,

and his colleagues investigated the treatment of terminally ill cancer

patients who were referred for palliative radiotherapy at the

University Hospital between December 2003 and July 2004. In all, they

studied 33 of these patients, all of whom died within 30 days of

receiving radiation therapy.

 

Bottom line: for most patients, the treatments were not effective and

patients who were close to death and wanted to die in their own homes

were instead kept in the hospital so they could be irradiated. And they

often ended up dying in the hospital while suffering greatly from the

effects of the radiation treatment.

 

The Cancer study found that radiotherapy was delivered to 91

percent of dying cancer patients and half of those patients spent more

than 60 percent of their remaining lifespan on radiotherapy. In fact,

only 58 percent of patients completed radiotherapy, primarily because

they died. The therapy did not reduce pain in the vast majority.

In fact, it increased pain and suffering in more than half of the

patients.

 

Moreover, the researchers reported that many doctors who ordered

palliative radiotherapy overestimated how long their patients had to

live. Among cancer patients who died within one month, about one in

five of their physicians had predicted more than six months survival.

The German research team suggested that "excessive radiotherapy in

end-stage cancer patients may reflect overoptimistic prognoses and

unrealistic concerns about radiation damage."

 

"Radiation oncologists have fallen short in accurately determining the

life span of terminally ill cancer patients. This has resulted in

unduly prolonged radiation therapy regimens that often go uncompleted

due to death or withdrawal from treatment," Dr. Gripp said in a

statement to the media.

 

For more information:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/...

http://www.naturalnews.com/radiatio...