Tom Parker's Diagnosis
- Singer Tom Parker announced he’s been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
- He’s currently undergoing treatment.
- Optune has shown remarkable progress in extending survival rates for brain tumor patients.
Parker broke the news of his brain tumor through a lengthy and emotional social media post. Initially, he kept his diagnosis a secret from the public in order to protect his family, but after talking to his wife, he decided to share his journey with fans to raise awareness.
Read MoreParker hasn’t shared the type of brain tumor he’s currently battling, but says he’s currently undergoing treatment. So far, there’s been no word about what treatment methods the singer is taking, but over decades theres been minimal progress in successfully treating brain tumors. However, recently, a new treatment option called Optune has shown results in extending survival rates for those diagnosed with glioblastoma the most common brain tumor found in adults.
How Does Optune Work?
Glioblastoma is an extremely aggressive and fast growing disease, and there’s been very few treatment advancements for those facing this diagnosis. Due to little progress, most glioblastoma patients’ expected survival time is no more than two years. However, that’s where Optune has shown to be a huge help. This is considered a tumor-treating therapy, and comes in the form of a cap patients place on their head. Optune is available to adult patients who are 22 or older, and was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in October 2015.
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An electric current runs through adhesive pads which are a part of the cap. The current disrupts the division of cancer cells which can slow down and delay the progression of the disease. As opposed to the median survival rate of glioblastoma patients (2 years), clinical trials that gave patients Optune, in addition to standard treatment, saw their survival rates go up. For half of the patients, two more years were added to their median survival, and a third of patients saw their survival rates go up by five more years.
“I just want to emphasize to patients that when I first started doing this in 1999, there were maybe less than 5% of patients with this disease that were alive two years,” Dr. Suriya Jeyapalan, a Neuro-oncologist at Tufts Medical Center, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview. “Now we’re getting out to maybe a third of patients alive at five years. This is not your father’s brain tumor, and I want to sort of give a message of hope to patients. In the future we’ll add to these treatments and make it even better.”
Dr. Suriya Jeyapalan explains how Optune is helping glioblastoma patients
How to Make the Right Decision
Since it’s still unclear what time of brain tumor Parker is battling, Optune may not be the best choice for his treatment. Plus, on the surface, some people may not see extending survival rates as the most idealistic solution. However, by adding 2 to 5 years to your life, you can be there for important milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries, or the birth of new family members. When making a treatment decision, it’s important to not only talk it through with your physician, but also weigh out pros and cons.
“A few months of life can be the difference between seeing your child being born, your grandchild graduating high school, and again it’s not just the amount of months for overall survival but actually at the tail end of the curve of how many people are alive at 5 years versus not,” Dr. Gordon Li, a neurosurgeon at Stanford School of Medicine, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview. “There is a significant difference in those. We can really improve people’s quality of life during that time too. My own personal thought is as a cancer physician a lot of our job is to give the treatment, do the right thing, be there with the patient, but also hope is one of the most powerful things we can give people.”
Dr. Gordon Li explains how patients may consider treatment that extend survival rates
However, that isn’t to say that continuing treatment is an easy process. Some patients may not be willing to continue the pain they’re experiencing, and they may decide to stop treatment. In cases such as these, doctors will switch to palliative care which means the cancer is no longer being treated, but a care team will work to make the end of the patient's life as painless and enjoyable as possible. Ultimately, the decision to continue or stop treatment should be completely up to the patient.
“When you know that you’re losing the battle against cancer, you have to make sure you prepare for the worst,” Dr. Raja Flores, the chairman of the Department of Thoracic Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview. “The toughest thing that I’ve seen is when patients will continue to fight to the end because they feel that that’s what their family wants…They have to realize, and the family has to realize that that’s not in the patient’s best interest. Sometimes the patients get so tired, and they need to be told, it’s OK. Let them go, and they just need to feel that they did everything to keep that person there.”
Dr. Raja Flores explains options when it comes to palliative care
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