I’ve started this thread because one of us might have a brilliant idea. I’m not suggesting that one of us has a cure for cancer, but someone might have an idea that could extend life, or make it more comfortable.
This is what would happen in my imaginary hospital:
* We would have Cyberknife, and TomoTherapy routinely available . As a result we would be able to proactively scan for new mets, and zap them with a curative dose of Cyberknife, or TomoTherapy as soon as they appeared - thereby slowing progression, and delaying the point when patients become dependent on Chemotherapy.
*We would perform a routine blood test to detect oestrogen in the blood, three months after prescribing Letrozole. This would give an idea of how well it had been working, (apparently Letrozole fails to work in around 50% of cases - due to resistance), and allow us to try a different type of endocrine therapy, if the former was not working.
*We would be paying a great deal of attention to the latest blood tests, that can identify a single cancer cell in billions of normal cells. Our scientists would create a machine that can combine these blood tests with dialysis and radiotherapy. We would then be able to connect our patients to a dialysis machine that identifies cancerous cells - and these cancerous cells would then be zapped with radiotherapy, so that they could no longer spread.
What would your hospital do?