I’ve been traveling in Europe, including giving a talk at the Salzburg Global Seminar on involving & informing patients in health care decisions. In that talk, I talked about promotion of a newer form of cancer radiation therapy called IMRT or intensity-modulated radiation therapy.
So I want to point out that, while I’ve been away, the Wall Street Journal published an important piece on this very topic, under the headline, “A Device to Kill Cancer, Lift Revenue.”
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Gregory D. Pawelski
December 16, 2010 at 2:47 pmI was well aware that myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) can be caused by treatment with chemotherapy. I was rudely reminded three years ago that radiation therapy can cause it too (treatment-related MDS or secondary MDS). Treatment-related MDS is often more severe and diffult to treat than de novo MDS (unknown changes to the bone marrow). I lost my brother-in-law (my wife’s brother) to MDS after he received permanent seed implants for “early” prostate cancer treatment (he was in his ’70s). Urologists can hardly hold themselves back and are out with all sorts of treatments. Sometimes, while a life may be saved, a life may be taken. I have experienced for the second time in my life, the issue. It does happen, but no one emphasizes that point.
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