Doctor who treated Kennedy says McCain may be able to return to Senate for awhile
A cancer specialist involved in the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s treatment for a brain tumor in 2008 said that Senator John McCain, who is suffering from the same type of cancer, may be able to return to the Senate and resume his normal activities for a time, despite the grim prognosis.
Dr. David A. Reardon, clinical director of Dana-Farber’s Center for Neuro-Oncology, said in an interview Thursday that he saw some positive signs in the publicly released reports about McCain’s condition: his brain tumor was caught early, was fairly small, and was successfully removed.
Additionally, because of the tumor’s location — above the left eye — the surgery is unlikely to result in major deficits that would prevent McCain from working, said Reardon, who is not involved in McCain’s treatment.
But glioblastoma, as the tumor is called, usually returns despite treatment. It remains one of the most difficult and deadly cancers, as well as the most common type of brain cancer, with 13,000 cases diagnosed each year in the United States. Glioblastoma has the bedeviling capacity to develop resistance to treatment, so that any success tends to be temporary, Reardon said.
Patients with glioblastoma survive, on average, 15 to 18 months after diagnosis, only three months longer than a decade ago, when Kennedy was diagnosed with the same tumor.
Reardon was involved in Kennedy’s care in 2008 after he received surgery at Duke University’s Brain Tumor Center, where Reardon was associate deputy director at the time. Kennedy’s tumor was in the part of the brain involved with speech, and the goal was to remove as much of the tumor as possible while preserving his ability to talk.
“That surgery had a significant impact in improving his outcome,’’ Reardon said.
Kennedy died Aug. 25, 2009 at age 77.
McCain, who is 80, is likely to be able to benefit from advances in immunotherapy and new understanding of the genetic make-up of individual tumors, Reardon said, although these new therapies are still experimental.
“This is considered an incurable cancer, although we do have treatments that can help most patients,’’ Reardon said.
