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Michael Douglas Cancer

March 15, 2012 by · Comments Off on Michael Douglas Cancer 

Michael Douglas Cancer, After months of radiation and chemotherapy for late-stage throat cancer, actor Michael Douglas is tumor-free, he told NBC’s Today Show viewers this morning. Not a trace of the stage-IV, walnut-sized tumor at the base of his tongue could be detected on medical imaging, Douglas said.

That’s a signal, researchers told MedPage Today and ABC News, of complete response to treatment.

Yet they caution that the 66-year-old Douglas is hardly out of the woods.

“We always hope that our treatments cure the patient but the reality is that even in the absence of detectable disease, he is at risk for recurrence,” Dr. Scott Strome, chair of head and neck surgery at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, wrote in an e-mail.

It is typical for this type of cancer — even at stage-IV — to be in complete remission at this point, according to Dr. Gregory T. Wolf, chair emeritus of the University of Michigan Hospitals in Ann Arbor.  Prognosis, however, depends significantly on the biology of the tumor.

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