Proton cancer therapy ‘effective’
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The cancer treatment that was at the heart of an NHS controversy in 2014 has now been ‘proved effective with fewer side effects’.
Ashya King’s parents removed him from hospital in Hampshire in order to get the proton beam therapy abroad. At the time, NHS doctors had told the family that the treatment could not be given to their son and recommended they did not travel abroad for Ashya to get it.
According to new research published in The Lancet Oncology, proton beam therapy is just as effective as other treatments. The conclusion was reached after researchers looked at 59 patients aged between three and 21 from 2003 to 2009.
This discovery comes at a time when Ashya, who was just five at the time of his treatment, is now cancer free and going to school.
Dr Yock told BBC Radio 5 live: “The major finding is that proton therapy is as effective as photon therapy [conventional X-ray radiotherapy] in curing these patients and what is also very exciting is that it is maintaining these high rates of cure but doing so with less late toxicity, which has dramatic quality of life improvement.”