Carter then told the attendees that his recent MRI scans showed no signs of cancer at all.
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Image Guided Cancer Specialist (IGCS), a Florida medical group specializing in the treatment of cancer using the combinations of immunotherapy with image guided ablation, calls the immunotherapy Carter received “one of the greatest advances in cancer treatment”.
CNN interviewed Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, about Carter’s announcement.
It’s the best news possible in a hard situation.
Former President Jimmy Carter said Sunday that his latest brain scan found no evidence of melanoma, the serious form of cancer that doctors discovered this summer in his liver and brain.
Carter said he will continue receiving doses of Keytruda every three weeks.
Experts are giving credit to both cutting edge medicine and carter’s advanced age.
“Not uncommonly, it can spread to organs like the liver and the brain”, said Shepard. Carter is undergoing radiation and immune-based drug treatment for metastatic melanoma at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute.
“There’s no question it’s very positive”, Flaherty said. Keytruda works by getting in the way of those proteins, allowing the immune system to access the cancer cells.
Now, several months since beginning immunotherapy, Carter’s treatments appear to have worked. “He’s in fantastic shape for 91 and I like happy endings and I’m very happy that he is going to be OK and be with us for a while”, Kurland said. “When you talk about melanoma in the brain and you find it at a small size, the treatments can be more effective”.
Carter publicly announced his cancer battle in August.
“He did not say he was cured”. So we never know that there’s no cancer anywhere.
Despite the diagnosis, Carter continued to volunteer, working to build homes for Habitat for Humanity, an organization he’s been involved with since 1984.
“I haven’t been uncomfortable or ill after the treatments were over”, he said. The good news is, we’re not talking super-low percentages. Many people are concerned about the cost of new cancer therapies, which now routinely debut at more than $100,000 a year. He went through surgery and radiation – and also had a drug called, “Keytruda”. And up until 2011, there were no developments on the drug. “And it’s expensive to have large trials”, Demopoulos said. That makes patients like Carter, more likely to be able to continue their usual activities. “That’s how fast things are changing”.
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But the drugs can help some patients live longer, Turnham said.
