Prayers for Senator McCain (diagnosed with brain cancer)

Didn't Ted kennedy die of brain cancer during the last healthcare debate?

 

Hate to quote myself, but CNN just confirmed that it's the same type of cancer as Ted Kennedy had.

 

Sad

 

They said the brain tumor has been completely removed and he recovering "amazingly well."

 

GBM is almost always fatal. :-(

I hope his upcoming days are filled with dignity and respect.

 

Depends really if its a primary or metastatic, prayers to him & his family

 

Prayers to McCain, he is an honorable man that has always stood up for what he believed was right.

A relative of mine passed away due to GBM 4-5 yrs ago. It is the nastiest cancer that exists imo, due to the cognitive decline and resistance to chemo/rad. After watching my uncle and a handful patients go through it, it's one of the few cancers I decided I personally would not get treatment for.

 

Just for correctness sake, not really. Median survival is 12-15 for around 95% of people. Mets is not really an issue since it is so fast growing and the primary tumor itself ends up being fatal. Without tx survival is typically just 2-3 months.

 

Average survival is 14 months with treatment. 10% make it to five years according to the CNN story.

 

That sounds abnormally high. Not here to call CNN out. Edit* did find one paper reporting that from 2009, but it did stratify it based on age and other risk factors. The majority of evidence finds less than 5% of people making it past 13 months. As Azadre has stated, this will kill him, and probably ~1yr. His age is also a big negative in terms of prognosis.

Devastating news for the family, Mccain was a true hero regardless of what people say.

 

I have only met one patient who was a long term survivor of GBM (>25 years). The vast majority I have seen survive their surgery, radiation and chemo but ultimately have local recurrence.

I expect this GBM will kill Senator McCain, with or without treatment.

 

Sorry to hear this. One of the precious few national politicians I've respected over the years.

 

Doesn't cancer generally progress more slowly if you are older? But I guess your defense mechanisms are much weaker as well, so mortality is higher?

 

Older people are more likely to have less aggressive cancers compared to their younger counterparts. But a GBM is the most aggressive form of an astrocytoma that exists and I have not seen or read that age has a factor in outcomes (aside from my personal bias that if you're McCains age hospice makes more sense than aggressive treatment).

What a sad day for US politics.

 

Not a heme/onc but age is a negative predictor for overall survival for most cancers based on the literature. Progression is very specific to the type of cancer, and also specific to the type of mutations within that cancer. GBM is inherently very very fast growing. Like crazy fast.

 

I've been curious and scrolling through pubmed, a couple of papers showed that it was a significant predictor on overall survival. I'm actually really surprised you have seen someone that has gone 25 years. That's like unheard of. The family will be faced with a lot of decisions, hope they find peace in whatever path they go down.

 

That younger patients do better for GBM? I bet it was everything to do with their functional status before treatment. Either way, we throw everything we got to eek out a few more months.

The only thing I can think of for the long term survivor is that it was treated early enough and the "stem cells" for the tumor were taken with it. There is almost always microscopic spread along the white matter fibers that surgery cannot remove.

Or maybe the pathologist was wrong and it was a lower grade astrocytome. I didn't question his story. But I do know vast majority that I have seen don't live long.

 

i hope his recovery now goes well and he can spend his final days with his family and loved ones.

 

the thread did not specify what type of tumor , so was my response , now that he's diagnosed with GBM , it's a STUPP protocol