www.abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/story?id=6813420&page=1
CancerPreventionAndTreatment Ginsburg's Cancer May Have Been Caught Early Enough Doctors Are Cautiously Optimistic About US Supreme Court Justice's Survival Odds By RADHA CHITALE, JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN and DAN CHILDS ABC News Medical Unit Feb.
RSS Despite undergoing surgery for what could turn out to be one of the deadliest cancers known, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg may have a better chance of surviving than most others with the illness, cancer experts said today. US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been hospitalized for surgery to remove a pancreatic tumor. Ginsburg has undergone surgery for a tumor on her pancreas. Joan Bull, a professor of oncology at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, said that the size of the tumor, which was discovered during a routine checkup in late January, suggests that the cancer was caught at a very early stage, possibly before it had a chance to spread. If so, it would set Ginsburg, 75, apart from the 60 percent to 70 percent of pancreatic cancer patients whose disease is caught after it has spread to other areas of the body.
totally, with no lymph node or other vascular involvement, it does sound like a good outcome," Bull said, adding that treating pancreatic cancer at stage 1 gives patients a high chance of survival. Martin Makary, a pancreas surgeon and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Surgical Outcomes Research in Baltimore, said that there is still a slim chance that the tumor was not cancerous.
"Lots of times, there is no perfect way to know for certain whether it's cancer or not based on preoperative testing. There is little argument that pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly cancers. The American Cancer Society puts the odds of surviving five years after being diagnosed in the early stages with the disease at 37 percent. In comparison, the five-year survival rate for early-stage breast cancer and early-stage prostate cancer is virtually 100 percent. Early-stage colon cancer, which Ginsburg weathered in 1999, carries a 93 percent five-year survival rate. Whether Ginsburg will emerge as successfully from what could be pancreatic cancer remains to be seen. "Justice Ginsburg's success in beating back a diagnosis of colon cancer nearly 10 years ago has inspired and given hope to many in the cancer fight," Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said in a statement issued today. "This new diagnosis is unfortunate, and we take hope in reports that this was apparently an early stage of the disease, and wish her well, offer our support and prayers, and want to encourage her in what we know is going to be a challenging course of therapy." Although the hospital has not yet released the exact details of Ginsburg's operation, most pancreatic cancer patients undergo what is known as a Whipple procedure. In this surgery, parts of the pancreas are removed along with parts of the stomach and small intestine, the gallbladder, part of the common bile duct, and some nearby lymph nodes.
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