(NaturalNews) A new analysis just published in the journal Cancer
concludes that a significant proportion of terminally ill cancer patients spend
most of their final days and weeks subjected to grueling radiation therapy
(radiotherapy). What makes this extra heartbreaking and downright
outrageous is that irradiating dying cancer patients does absolutely nothing for
the vast majority -- except to cause more end-of-life suffering and to keep
countless people in the hospital, instead of allowing them to die at home.
When mainstream medicine runs out of treatments to try for long-term cancer
control, so-called palliative radiotherapy is often ordered for end-stage cancer
patients. The rationale? It's supposed to control cancer-related pain and other
symptoms by reducing the number of cancer cells. That, in theory, can relieve
pressure and bleeding and give patients a better quality of life in their final
months and days.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Finally, in their new paper, Germany researchers
have documented just how dismal the results of palliative radiotherapy really
are.
Stephan Gripp, MD, of the University Hospital in Dusseldorf, Germany, and his
colleagues investigated the treatment of terminally ill cancer patients who were
referred for palliative radiotherapy at the University Hospital between December
2003 and July 2004. In all, they studied 33 of these patients, all of whom died
within 30 days of receiving radiation therapy.
Bottom line: for most patients, the treatments were not effective and patients
who were close to death and wanted to die in their own homes were instead kept
in the hospital so they could be irradiated. And they often ended up dying in
the hospital while suffering greatly from the effects of the radiation
treatment.
The Cancer study found that radiotherapy was delivered to 91 percent of
dying cancer patients and half of those patients spent more than 60 percent of
their remaining lifespan on radiotherapy. In fact, only 58 percent of patients
completed radiotherapy, primarily because they died. The therapy did not
reduce pain in the vast majority. In fact, it increased pain and suffering in
more than half of the patients.
Moreover, the researchers reported that many doctors who ordered palliative
radiotherapy overestimated how long their patients had to live. Among cancer
patients who died within one month, about one in five of their physicians had
predicted more than six months survival. The German research team suggested that
"excessive radiotherapy in end-stage cancer patients may reflect overoptimistic
prognoses and unrealistic concerns about radiation damage."
"Radiation oncologists have fallen short in accurately determining the life span
of terminally ill cancer patients. This has resulted in unduly prolonged
radiation therapy regimens that often go uncompleted due to death or withdrawal
from treatment," Dr. Gripp said in a statement to the media.