Former President & Cancer Warrior
- 39th President Jimmy Carter announced that he and his wife will not attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20th.
- In 2015, Carter was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma that had spread to his brain; he went through a combination treatment of surgery, immunotherapy, and radiation. Later that year he was declared in remission.
- Radiation is an uncommon treatment option for melanoma, but is extremely effective in cases of stage 4 diagnoses where the disease has spread to the brain.
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Navigating Metastatic Melanoma
Among skin cancers, melanoma is the most aggressive form of the disease. A metastatic diagnosis means he cancer has spread to other parts of the body, which in Carter’s case was his brain. However, thanks to years of research, there are still treatment options for those battling metastatic melanoma. Carter’s treatment plan of surgery, radiation, and immunotherapy is often considered the most effective route for patients to take.
Surgery
Seeing as melanoma often presents itself as a physical mark on the skin, the goal of surgery is to remove the cancerous mark and its cells. This if often effective on its own in early-stage melanoma cases, but since metastatic melanoma spreads, other measures need to be taken. That’s where immunotherapy and radiation comes in.
Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy is a treatment plan that has revolutionized cancer care in many fields, and harnesses the power of a patient’s own immune system to fight off cancer cells. However, like any treatment, immunotherapy can come with its own set of side-effects. These side-effects can include a severe rash or severe diarrhea. The risk of experiencing side-effects depends on the amount of immunotherapy drugs you’re taking. For those prescribed one medicine, there’s up to a 15% chance side-effects will occur; for those prescribed two medications, the risk increases up to 50%.
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"When immunotherapy came on the market it was such an exciting time for everyone involved in the care of melanoma, the main reason being is it went from this scary unmanageable cancer with no treatments to one that could potentially have a long lasting result with patients absolutely never having to worry about their melanoma," Dr. Cecilia Larocca, a dermatologist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview.
Dr. Cecilia Larocca explains how immunotherapy can tremendously impact advanced melanoma treatment
Radiation
Radiation is sometimes considered the most uncommon treatment option for melanoma, but when it comes to metastatic melanoma, it can be extremely effective under certain circumstances. For patients who have stage 4 metastatic melanoma which has spread to their brains (which was the case for Carter), this can be an especially effective treatment plan.
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“We use very focused radiation, either stereotactic radiation or gamma knife radiation, which is essentially 200 beams of radiation that will target just that tumor, and try to burn out that tumor so that we don’t affect the normal brain and the cognitive functioning of patients,” Dr. Anna Pavlick, a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview.
Due to the severity of the diagnosis, this form of treatment is often very intense and thorough. However, Dr. Pavlick assures that it has shown great results for patients battling this disease.
Dr. Anna Pavlick explains how radiation can help stage 4 metastatic melanoma patients
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