4 ms·

they use radiation to treat cancer tho, so i guess he did

thaumasiotes 13y ago
This is true, but radiation therapy is near-exclusively recommended to people who are expected to die before the new, radiation-caused cancer kicks in. It was a point of contention with my mother's father.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  I don't know what kind of cancer your mother's father suffered from, but that's not true at all. There are a number of cancers for which radiation therapy is very effective and indicated as the first line of action before chemotherapies. Check your facts before posting : http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/radiation http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/radiati...
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    Or in conjunction with. Surgery, chemo and radiation therapy together are very common.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    OK, fair enough. It was just prostate cancer; I might have been thinking of the likely side effect being cancer when it was really bowel damage (listed on that page). His doctor believed radiation was indeed the best option, and my mother (also a doctor) generally agreed; he didn't like the idea of the side effects. The thinking, never expressed to him, was that his severe alcoholism was likely to kill him before they developed, but they were expected to develop if that didn't happen. Chemotherapy has extremely nasty side effects, so it's not unreasonable for radiation to be the first line of defense even when radiation is guaranteed (or near-guaranteed) to cause severe problems later on. Looking at the common side effects again, I'd take chemotherapy before infertility, but a lifetime of chronic diarrhea might well be better than going through chemo. I also note that that page says "in general, the lifetime risk of a second cancer is highest in people treated for cancer as children or adolescents", which is definitely in harmony with the idea that radiation therapy looks better and better the less time you expect to live after getting it. I'd be happy to unphrase my upper comment, but it seems I can't. :/
    - mtdewcmu 13y ago
      It's not uncommon to find that the treatment for some disease or symptom also carries a risk of causing it. Having a cell flip and become malignant is a probabilistic event, and radiation only changes the probability. If you already have a malignancy, it's worth taking your chances with future cancers to cure the one you already have. Another explanation for why survivors of childhood cancer would have a high rate of recurrence is that they were prone to getting cancer in the first place, and they carry that tendency into adulthood.
      - thaumasiotes 13y ago
        > Another explanation for why survivors of childhood cancer would have a high rate of recurrence is that they were prone to getting cancer in the first place, and they carry that tendency into adulthood. Don't take this as an expert opinion, but I lean slightly against that idea. For example, the linked fact sheet notes that young girls who are treated in the chest for hodgkin's lymphoma (one of the rare types of cancers that young people get) have an elevated lifetime risk of ordinary breast cancer. That's less of a "recurrence" and more of a "second cancer". Relatedly, the types of cancer that young people get, and that old people get, aren't all that similar.
        mtdewcmu 13y ago
        That's what I meant; I didn't mean to say it had to be the same cancer. If the breast cancer was located in the same breast and same area that was irradiated (assuming the radiation was local and not systemic), that would make a strong argument that it was likely secondary to the childhood treatment. The fact that the second cancer was breast cancer isn't all that convincing by itself, because it's an all-around common cancer. My point was that it's another explanation that has to be considered. It doesn't mean the explanation you proposed could not be valid.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      > I also note that that page says "in general, the lifetime risk of a second cancer is highest in people treated for cancer as children or adolescents", which is definitely in harmony with the idea that radiation therapy looks better and better the less time you expect to live after getting it. Well one potential explanation is that any treatment you get during childhood usually carries a higher risk than on adults. I haven't seen data suggesting that radiation treatment in adults increase the risks of cancer, and by the way radiation is now extensively used in many diagnostic tools and it is generally accepted that low dose of radiations are harmless or even beneficial (while the media keeps screaming that any level of radiation causes cancer, which is nonsensical).

This is true, but radiation therapy is near-exclusively recommended to people who are expected to die before the new, radiation-caused cancer kicks in. It was a point of contention with my mother's father.

ekianjo 13y ago
I don't know what kind of cancer your mother's father suffered from, but that's not true at all. There are a number of cancers for which radiation therapy is very effective and indicated as the first line of action before chemotherapies. Check your facts before posting : http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/radiation http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/radiati...
- lostlogin 13y ago
  Or in conjunction with. Surgery, chemo and radiation therapy together are very common.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  OK, fair enough. It was just prostate cancer; I might have been thinking of the likely side effect being cancer when it was really bowel damage (listed on that page). His doctor believed radiation was indeed the best option, and my mother (also a doctor) generally agreed; he didn't like the idea of the side effects. The thinking, never expressed to him, was that his severe alcoholism was likely to kill him before they developed, but they were expected to develop if that didn't happen. Chemotherapy has extremely nasty side effects, so it's not unreasonable for radiation to be the first line of defense even when radiation is guaranteed (or near-guaranteed) to cause severe problems later on. Looking at the common side effects again, I'd take chemotherapy before infertility, but a lifetime of chronic diarrhea might well be better than going through chemo. I also note that that page says "in general, the lifetime risk of a second cancer is highest in people treated for cancer as children or adolescents", which is definitely in harmony with the idea that radiation therapy looks better and better the less time you expect to live after getting it. I'd be happy to unphrase my upper comment, but it seems I can't. :/
  - mtdewcmu 13y ago
    It's not uncommon to find that the treatment for some disease or symptom also carries a risk of causing it. Having a cell flip and become malignant is a probabilistic event, and radiation only changes the probability. If you already have a malignancy, it's worth taking your chances with future cancers to cure the one you already have. Another explanation for why survivors of childhood cancer would have a high rate of recurrence is that they were prone to getting cancer in the first place, and they carry that tendency into adulthood.
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago
      > Another explanation for why survivors of childhood cancer would have a high rate of recurrence is that they were prone to getting cancer in the first place, and they carry that tendency into adulthood. Don't take this as an expert opinion, but I lean slightly against that idea. For example, the linked fact sheet notes that young girls who are treated in the chest for hodgkin's lymphoma (one of the rare types of cancers that young people get) have an elevated lifetime risk of ordinary breast cancer. That's less of a "recurrence" and more of a "second cancer". Relatedly, the types of cancer that young people get, and that old people get, aren't all that similar.
      - mtdewcmu 13y ago
        That's what I meant; I didn't mean to say it had to be the same cancer. If the breast cancer was located in the same breast and same area that was irradiated (assuming the radiation was local and not systemic), that would make a strong argument that it was likely secondary to the childhood treatment. The fact that the second cancer was breast cancer isn't all that convincing by itself, because it's an all-around common cancer. My point was that it's another explanation that has to be considered. It doesn't mean the explanation you proposed could not be valid.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > I also note that that page says "in general, the lifetime risk of a second cancer is highest in people treated for cancer as children or adolescents", which is definitely in harmony with the idea that radiation therapy looks better and better the less time you expect to live after getting it. Well one potential explanation is that any treatment you get during childhood usually carries a higher risk than on adults. I haven't seen data suggesting that radiation treatment in adults increase the risks of cancer, and by the way radiation is now extensively used in many diagnostic tools and it is generally accepted that low dose of radiations are harmless or even beneficial (while the media keeps screaming that any level of radiation causes cancer, which is nonsensical).