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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
New Breast Cancer Treatment Shows Great Promise
There's some promising1 news about breast cancer treatment. In clinical trials at Johns Hopkins Cancer Center in Baltimore, Maryland, doctors report they successfully pumped cancer-fighting medicine directly into a breast tumor2. Early results show the treatment not only kills the tumor, but spares the patients disfiguring surgery and the side effects of more radical3 treatments.
The earliest stages of breast cancer are usually discovered during a mammogram. Right now, the standard treatment when tumors are found is surgery, followed by radiation therapy and then hormone4 treatment. Some women who have a high risk of getting breast cancer even opt5 to have mastectomies - the surgical6 removal of one or both breasts - just to reduce their risk.
At Johns Hopkins Cancer Center in Baltimore, one oncologist has been studying a less radical approach.
"Since most cancers originate within the breasts and the cells that line the milk ducts within the breasts, can we possibly eliminate those dangerous cells, and by doing so, eliminate breast cancer?" asks Dr. Vared Sterns.
The idea is simple. Give a small concentration of a chemotherapy drug directly through the patient's nipple and into the milk ducts where cancer cells or even pre-cancerous cells are forming. The entire procedure takes about 30 minutes. In clinical trials, researchers found this technique was more effective and less toxic7 than the conventional practice of administering chemotherapy through the vein8.
In clinical trials at Johns Hopkins Cancer Center in Baltimore, Maryland, doctors report they successfully pumped cancer-fighting medicine directly into a breast tumor. |
"What we found was that the concentration of the drug within the breast was very, very high, while the concentration of the drug within the blood system was very low," said Sterns.
With conventional chemotherapy, the opposite was true: Drugs administered through the vein concentrated in the blood system and but were less concentrated where they were most needed - in the breast. The clinical trials have been so promising that this type of treatment might eventually become the standard for patients with very early stages of breast cancer or those who are at risk of developing it.
"It is my hope that the treatment can be delivered in just your usual mammogram suite9. This has been done in our study quite easily on an outpatient basis. It doesn't take very long. It's not painful," said Sterns.
She likens this procedure to a colonoscopy. If there's a polyp, the doctor removes it before it can become cancerous.
Dr. Sterns said researchers need to find out how much of the drug is needed and how often it should be administered to rid the breast of cancer. She estimates that work will take another 10 years. Then, if this procedure is as promising as it seems, it may become standard treatment for patients with early stage breast cancer.
1 promising | |
adj.有希望的,有前途的 | |
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2 tumor | |
n.(肿)瘤,肿块(英)tumour | |
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3 radical | |
n.激进份子,原子团,根号;adj.根本的,激进的,彻底的 | |
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4 hormone | |
n.荷尔蒙,激素,内分泌 | |
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5 opt | |
vi.选择,决定做某事 | |
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6 surgical | |
adj.外科的,外科医生的,手术上的 | |
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7 toxic | |
adj.有毒的,因中毒引起的 | |
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8 vein | |
n.血管,静脉;叶脉,纹理;情绪;vt.使成脉络 | |
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9 suite | |
n.一套(家具);套房;随从人员 | |
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