Health Watch is a Public Service of the Office of News and Publications and is intended to provide general information only and should not replace the advice of a medical professional. You should contact your physician if you have questions about any of these topics.
Medical researchers continue to make strides in their work on cancer. This week on Heath Watch
we’ll be talking about some recent cancer research breakthroughs.
It’s important to know whether a treatment is working. Pancreatic cancer, in particular, tends to spread quickly. Dr. Rolf Brekken, a cancer researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center, says the sooner doctors know that a treatment isn’t working, the sooner they can change to a different treatment, and that improves a patient’s chances. The UT Southwestern researchers have found a way to test the effectiveness of one treatment for pancreatic cancer. The treatment reduces the number blood vessels that deliver oxygen and nutrients to tumors. Micobubbles, which are used to show blood flow in echocardiograms, allow doctors to see with ultrasound what’s happening on blood vessels in the pancreatic tumor. The technology is safe and readily available and gives an accurate picture of how well the cancer treatment is working.
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January 2007
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