Experts say Carter’s doctors will regularly scan his body for cancer cells.
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Jimmy Carter says that his most recent brain scan showed no signs of cancer.
In August, Jimmy Carter released a statement announcing that he had cancer and was seeking treatment.
The doctors had found four lesions in his brain.
“It is fantastic news”. His first post-cancer lesson drew almost 1,000 people to a church built for a few hundred, and people slept in their cars as they waited overnight for first-come, first-served seats.
Carter was reportedly teaching about 350 people at the time of the announcement and a lot of them were visitors.
“He said he got a scan this week and the cancer was gone”, Jill Stuckey, a close friend of Carter’s and a Maranatha member, told AJC. At that point, his melanoma had spread to his brain and liver. The drug goes by the name Keytruda commercially. One of the interesting things about these drugs is that as they wake up the immune system. “But you can have a very large tumor that the immune system seemingly ignores, even though it’s an abnormal collection of cells”, he said. The interaction between the two genes lets some tumors escape detection and destruction by immune system cells.
Now, several months since beginning immunotherapy, Carter’s treatments appear to have worked. “There’s no question it’s very positive”, Flaherty said of Carter’s scan.
Over the weekend, Carter stunned the medical world by announcing that he is now cancer-free. “For today, the news can not be better”, Lichtenfeld said. He seemed resigned and said that he was at ease with his potential death.
“For someone who is 90 years old, getting these sorts of therapies and doing so well, it’s pretty awesome”, said Shepard.
Chemotherapy can be hard on patients-along with killing cancer cells, it can also kill healthy cells. 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. A patient in Mr. Carter’s situation would need to go three to five years without evidence of lesions before doctors can say with confidence that he has been cured, according to Dr. Dale Shepard, an oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
“It’s as good of an outcome as someone with advanced melanoma can hope for”, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society.
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However, immunotherapy, which Carter has been receiving since August, is different. Since leaving the White House, he has remained active, carrying out humanitarian efforts with his Carter Center, which focuses on human rights efforts and political mediation.
