New Treatment for Inherited Form of Eye Cancer Lowers Use of Radiation
From Times staff and wire reports
Researchers from Childrens Hospital Los Angeles say they have developed the most significant advance in the treatment of retinoblastoma--a genetically caused eye cancer--in 40 years. Dr. A. Linn Murphree and Dr. Judith Villablanca report in this month’s Archives of Ophthalmology that they were able to successfully treat 170 young patients with the technique, which involves intensive chemotherapy, without using significant amounts of radiation.
Radiation has long been the primary therapy for retinoblastoma, but it is disfiguring in many patients because it causes bone loss around the eyes. It also increases the risk that the children will eventually develop a radiation-induced cancer.
