Chemotherapy warning as hundreds die from cancer-fighting drugs (cancer drugs may kill up to 50 % patients)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/08/30/chemotherapy-warning-as-hundreds-die-from-cancer-fighting-drugs/
Sarah Knapton, Science Editor 30 August 2016
Patients should be warned about the dangers of chemotherapy after research showed that cancer drugs are killing up to 50 per cent of patients in some hospitals.
For the first time researchers looked at the numbers of cancer patients who died within 30 days of starting chemotherapy, which indicates that the medication is the cause of death, rather than the cancer.
In Milton Keynes the death rate for lung cancer treatment was 50.9 per cent, although it was based on a very small number of patients.
Deaths of lung cancer patients from chemotherapy were also far higher than the national average in Blackpool, Coventry, Derby, South Tyneside and Surrey and Sussex, according to the research.
Similarly, around one in five people who underwent palliative care for breast cancer at Cambridge University Hospitals died from their treatment.
Public Health England (PHE), said it had contacted the hospitals concerned to ask them to review practices.
More than 1,300 breast and lung cancer patients died because of chemotherapy in 2014, the study shows Chemotherapy is toxic for the body because it does not discriminate between healthy and cancerous cells.
They advised doctors to be more careful in selecting patients for treatment where it could do more harm than good.
“I think it’s important to make patients aware that there are potentially life threatening downsides to chemotherapy. And doctors should be more careful about who they treat with chemotherapy.”
Professor David Cameron, Edinburgh Cancer Centre, Western General Hospital, added: “The concern is that some of the patients dying within 30 days of being given chemo probably shouldn’t have been given the chemo.
The research was published in The Lancet Oncology.
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