Treatment advances for lymphoma have reduced deaths by 70%

New treatment advances for patients with follicular lymphoma, previously considered an incurable cancer, have reduced deaths in the first four years by 70 percent. A newly published study recommends that doctors carefully choose their patients' initial therapies because there are significant differences in overall survival rates, according to researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center's James P. Wilmot Cancer Center.

Scientists compared outcomes for 960 patients treated with three different regimens; survival rates vary from 91 percent for the newest treatments, which include monoclonal antibodies, to 69 percent for standard therapy.

"This is real evidence that the clinical advances we've made over the last 30 years are prolonging lives," said Richard I. Fisher, M.D., director of the Wilmot Cancer Center and lead author on a paper published online by the Journal of Clinical Oncology. "Some of the new therapies that include monoclonal antibodies have revolutionized treatment of this disease."

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