After undergoing surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, some 70 percent of patients suffer further spread of their glioblastoma along with such serious side effects as cognitive decline and strokes. “Further consultations with Senator McCain’s Mayo Clinic care team will indicate when he will return to the United States Senate,” his office said in a statement. What treatments come next?Īccording to the note from McCain’s physicians, “treatment options may include a combination of chemotherapy and radiation.” But it’s not clear yet what the timetable is for those treatments. However McCain’s glioblastoma is a primary tumor, doctors said in the note issued by his office, meaning that it arose independently of those previous bouts of cancer.
McCain has had multiple cases of melanoma, a skin cancer, that have been removed surgically according to health records he made public during his 2008 presidential bid. Is it related to McCain’s previous cancers? Virtually unique among cancers, however, glioblastomas do not spread to organs beyond the brain such as the lungs or bones, for reasons scientists do not understand.
Glioblastoma is also very aggressive, so much so that surgery almost never produces a cure by the time it is diagnosed glioblastoma has almost always spread to multiple regions of the brain that cannot be reached through surgery. The only known cause is ionizing radiation including that received for another tumor (McCain is not known to have had such therapy), though some studies have suggested an increased risk from some pesticides and petroleum products. (there will be an estimated 13,000 new cases this year), more men than women, and more whites than people of other races. It is rare, striking some 3 people out of 100,000 in the U.S. Glioblastoma is the most common form of brain cancer, making up 16 percent of all brain malignancies. Here are five things to know about glioblastoma and McCain’s future health. “The Senator and his family are reviewing further treatment options with his Mayo Clinic care team,” his office said in a written statement. McCain had undergone surgery to remove a blood clot above his left eye last week, and a subsequent pathology report of that tissue found that it was cancerous. John McCain has been diagnosed with the aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma, his office said on Wednesday. Are there any experimental treatments on the horizon?