The former US President delivered the good news in a statement, saying that he is cancer free but will continue to receive regular treatment.
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“I went to the doctors this week for the second time”, Carter said in a video posted on Twitter by NBC.
Mr Carter, who regularly teaches at the Maranatha Baptist Church, first announced the news to his Sunday school class in Plains, Georgia over the weekend.
Now doctors at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Insititue say recent tests show no signs of the previous cancer “spots” and no evidence of new malignancy. As the American Cancer Society notes, this is why doctors will rarely say a person is “cured”. He has been in treatment since.
“From very beginning [of this], I’ve said that in any battle between cancer and Carter’s brain, Carter’s brain will win”, said former White House communications director and longtime Carter friend Gerald Rafshoon.
After 15 months of follow-up, the trials have shown that seven out of 10 melanoma patients respond to the drug, and six out of 10 had a survival rate of two years or more, he said.
The medication Carter is taking is now FDA-approved for use in certain lung cancers. ‘He’s not going to stop doing the treatment, but at this point, there’s no cancer. Despite some apparently permanent debilitating side effects, ranging from chemo-induced neuropathy in both feet to a form of radiation enteritis and altered blood-cell counts, I’m incredibly lucky.
He also says immunotherapy drugs may work to fight a number of different cancers. That makes patients like Carter, more likely to be able to continue their usual activities. In fact, with the type of drug President Carter is getting, pembrolizumab, in other patients… they see the progression of the disease stopped.
Like conventional chemotherapy, traditional radiation does not distinguish between tumor cells and healthy cells – it kills both.
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While about 30 percent of patients treated with the drug experience significant shrinkage of their cancer, only approximately 5 percent experience complete remission, said Dr. Marc Ernstoff, director of the melanoma program at the Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute in Ohio.
