Issue No. 1987
3 - 9 August 2023
COSTA BLANCA SOUTH • EUROWEEKLYNEWS.COM
THE Doctor Balmis University Hospital in Alicante has partici pated in pioneering research worldwide that consolidates a new standard of treatment for initial lung cancer. This means increasing the survival rate by 20 per cent and will benefit more than 6,000 patients in Spain every year. The results of the study, Nadim II, from the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (GECP), have been published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" and endorse the great benefit of chemoim munotherapy with nivolumab before operating on lung tu mours in stage 3. Nivolumab is a type of monoclonal antibody therapy, which works by stimu lating the immune system to kill cancer cells. It consists of a new approach to the tumour in its initial stages that increases life ex pectancy. With this new scheme, 36.8 per cent of pa tients achieve complete reduc tion of the tumour, that is, al most four out of ten, compared
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MEDICAL MILESTONE
Survival rates may rise
to 6.9 per cent who were treat ed with chemotherapy alone. Doctor Bartomeu Massuti, secretary of the group and head of Oncology at the Doctor Balmis Hospital in Alicante, pointed out that “This Spanish study opens the door to a glob al change in the treatment of patients with early lung cancer. Currently only 30 per cent of these patients survive five years. With the Nadim scheme this percentage could reach 70 per cent. Thousands of patients
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can benefit from improve ments in response to treat ment and survival each year in Spain”. “We are talking about a change in the therapeutic ap proach and strategy that in volves many professionals: pathologists , surgeons, oncolo gists or radiotherapists. We have found a significant im provement that may put us on the path to curing a significant number of patients “ said Mas suti.
The Nadim II data published in the New England Journal of Medicine opens the door to in creasing the percentage of pa tients who achieve longterm complete remission of their tu mour. In this sense, the data from the study reports that 36.8 per cent of the patients achieved a complete reduction of the tumour, compared to 6.9 per cent who did so with the traditional approach of ap plying the treatment after surgery.
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