Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter once again provided an update on his health today, saying that his most recent scans showed no cancer. Carter underwent treatment at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta, Georgia, US Weekly reports. “I knew he wasn’t really human”, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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“We were very, very surprised”, said Jill Stuckey, who is a member of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., where Carter has taught Sunday school for decades.
The Carter Center said in a statement then that Carter’s “original problem is responding well to treatment”. Canter said in August that no cancer had been found on his pancreatic so far.
“So a lot of people prayed for me”, Carter continued, calmly, “and I appreciate that”. Besides surgery on the liver and radiation to the brain, he also received a new immunotherapy drug called pembrolizumab.
Carter reported last August that doctors found four small melanoma lesions on his brain. “So I have good news”.
Carter has said he experienced no side effects during treatment, a positive sign for his doctors, said Dr. Keith Flaherty, a melanoma specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies who is not involved in Carter’s treatment.
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Jimmy Carter’s cancer is gone, the former president announced on Sunday. Medical experts asked about Carter’s case say doctors will closely monitor Carter for any new signs of cancer, stressing that while the latest tests are encouraging, Carter has not necessarily been cured. But with immuno-oncology drugs, he said, “the opposite is true: when a melanoma or other cancer has many mutations, it’s more likely that the immune system can attack them”. Making Carter’s recovery even more astonishing is that only one-third of malignant melanoma patients respond to Keytruda treatment.
