Shah has liver cancer

Press, 2 April 1980, Page 8

Shah has liver cancer

NZPA-Reuter Cairo The Shah of Iran is suffering from cancer of the liver, and the disease .also attacked his spleen, which was removed last week, one of the surgeons who operated on him has said. -j Doctor Fuad Nur, head ofi the tumour department at Maadi Military- Hospital, said such cases did not rei quire the liver also to be removed, but could:be treated ■with drugs. Asked if the ■■■ former .king could expect to live indefinitely, Dr '• Nur said: ; “Yes he. can, he is. living ' normally now.” Other Egyptian surgeons, not involved wtih treatment of the Shah but familiar with such cases, said that when cancer spread to this , degree, it usually had fatal ' implications. • Mohammed Reza Pahlavi "was treated last (northern) autumn in New York hospi1 tai for cancer in a lymph ’ node in his neck, and his j gall bladder was taken out. J Doctors said in Cairo last : week that at the time his I spleen was observed to be • slightly swollen. I By the time he arrived in Egypt last Monday after 100 J days of exile in Panama, the .spleen had swollen to the ’ size of a football, 10 times ’ its normal dimensions. Dr Nur said pathological , tests after the splenectomy ( confirmed the spleen was ’ cancerous. J Dr Nur was contacted at [ his office by reporters requesting clarification of an ; official bulletin which said ; merely that the post-oper- ' ative tests had shown . “lymphomatic swelling.” I He was asked whether . this meant the Shah had , cancer of the liver and that t his spleen had been cancert ous. “Yes, that is the disease , he has,” Dr Nur replied. • The operating team was , headed by Dr Michael Debakey, a famous heart surgeon, ; from Houston, Texas. It in- ; eluded Gerald Lawrie, Dr Debakey’s associate at the . Baylor College of Medicine . in Houston, Dr Nur, and an Egyptian surgeon, Dr Mo- . hammed Kamel.

The team was augmented by other doctors and a French blood specialist,- Dr Georges Flandrin, who . has been treating the Shah’s lymphatic cancer since it first appeared in 1974. Mr Flandrin told a news conference after the operation last week- that the chemotherapy was expected to continue essentially unchanged. “We all believe that this disease can be controlled by drugs,” Dr Nur said yesterday. ‘ ■, . ■. . -