For some cancer patients, immunotherapy may be way to skip surgery and chemo

Immunotherapy let some cancer patients with mismatch repair deficient tumors completely avoid surgery, chemo and radiation, a clinical trial finds.
Maureen Sideris was driving to Maine for a wedding when she realized she couldn’t swallow the sandwich she was having for lunch.
The 71-year-old was soon diagnosed with gastroesophageal cancer. It was August 2022. The tumor, she said, blocked off a portion of her esophagus, the tube that carries food from the mouth to the stomach, making it difficult to swallow food.
The standard treatment approach for esophageal cancer — chemotherapy and radiation, followed by surgery to remove part of the esophagus and stomach — “is quite devastating,” said Dr. Luis Diaz, the head of solid tumor oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “One can overcome that, and there’s a new normal after that, but it’s not like what it was before.”
Going through all of those treatments, Sideris said, “would have been horrendous.”
Instead, she received just one treatment — immunotherapy — as part of a clinical trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It’s been two years since she completed her treatment and she’s in remission.
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