RADIUM CANCER TREATMENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 December 1934, Page 2

RADIUM CANCER TREATMENT

RESULTS “BEWILDERING.” The results of research work in the treatment of cancer during 1933 by means of radium lent by the Medical Research Council to selected centres, and supplemented by quantities provided by the British Empire Cancer campaign and the National Radium Commission, are'reviewed in a report issued by the Council recently. “There is no doubt,” it is stated, “that the outcome of the research in radium therapy, initiated by the council centres all oyer the country, has done two things; it has helped towards the stabilisation of methods of treatment, and it has shown all too convincingly that the reaction of the tissues of the body to this form of radiation is of the most complex and bewildering variety. “The experimental results show that, even in the simplest living structures, the reaction to radiation is not something of which a ready explanation on description can he given. It is a phenomenon which presents as many aspects as do the various ways of giving radium treatment.” In one type of cancer frankly operable cases were treated just as successfully by radium as by surgery, but with a much smaller operation mortality, while surgically inoperable ca.ses treated by radiation yielded a by no means negligible percentage of clinical cures of five years’ standing. For primary lesions of the tongue radium was a successful agent in the proper hands. Both surgery and radiology were employed almost to an equal extent in the treatment of breast cancer. The chief contributions to treatment by radium had been initiated in this country. ’ : The number of cases of cancer treat- ' ed at the various centres during 1933 ' was 2,434. Of these, 554 were treated by surgery alone, 1,240 by radium alone, and 248 by X-rays alone. The remainder were treated by combinations of these treatments.

During the past four years 7,955 patients suffering from malignant disease had been treated. Of these 2,275 had been treated by surgery alone, and 3,415 had been treated by radium alone.