• Question: Can you cure cancer?

    Asked by MENTAL_PHYSICS_HEAD to Glafkos, Clare, Paul on 6 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by Jess.
    • Photo: Glafkos Havariyoun

      Glafkos Havariyoun answered on 6 Mar 2015:

      When it comes to cancer you can do two things:

      1) Curative treatment- this is the type of treatment you would give to a patient with cancer AIMING to cure it ! This could be either done by surgery (by taking the whole tumour out), radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or radioactivity therapy individually or a combination of these methods.

      2) Palliative treatment: this is the type of treatment you would give to a patient with cancer AIMING to prolong his life. This is because the cancer has reached such a stage that there is nothing we can do about it (yet). And all we can do is reduce it effects and symptoms (usually by making it smaller) and help the patient live a longer life (compared to if the patient did not have treatment) and a better life.

      So yes there are cases where a team of medical professionals including radiographers, oncologists, GPs, nurses and scientists can cure cancer! But this does not mean that it will not come back again.

      In my personal experience I have met patients with thyroid cancer that have been cured!

    • Photo: Clare Devery

      Clare Devery answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      Hi Mental-physics-head!
      As Glafkos has said, some cancers can be cured!
      There are many steps involved in diagnosing and treating cancer. In my job I am not involved with the cancer treating end, but rather the diagnosing end! This stage is very important too. To give the best treatment possible we need to know exactly what we are dealing with – the exact position of the cancer, the exact size and the exact composition. We do this through imaging, and MRI can help here. So that’s where I fit into the cancer treating production!

    • Photo: Paul Booker

      Paul Booker answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      Hi,

      Cancer can be cured, but perhaps not like you would expect. First you have to define what you mean by cure. Quite often with cancer we use the definition of 5 years of disease free survival from diagnosis. If we work with this definition then lots of patients that we treat are cured, although if there may be the possibility of the cancer coming back or side effects from the treatment manifesting after many more years. There are of course other ways of defining cure, you might initially think that curing means the cancer will never come back and the person will go back to exactly the way they were, but this isn’t usually realistic. As always in this sort of thing, you have to define very carefully what you mean.

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