(Reuters Health) - Patients with advanced head and neck cancer survived just as well on experimental drugs as they did on FDA-approved standard therapies in a new study.
- The findings suggest that doctors should consider referring their terminally ill patients to such trials.
- Patients survived an average of 12 weeks on FDA-approved treatments and 10.7 weeks on experimental drugs.
- 4 patients had some improvement in their cancer in response to the experimental drugs and 34 of them had no changes -- 1 patient died from a cause related to the treatment.
"There are worries about whether people who are vulnerable in this way are able to give informed consent" -- "you have to be very careful," -- "They've exhausted all the (treatments) that are available and standard," -- "there really isn't any better option for them. I think this is genuinely what many people want to do."
Can cancer patients benefit from new drug trials?
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67C30I20100813
(Reuters Health) - Patients with advanced head and neck cancer survived just as well on experimental drugs as they did on FDA-approved standard therapies in a new study.