When people think of cancer, blood cancer may not be the first thing that comes to mind.
That doesn’t mean it’s not out there and it’s not a threat, Vicki Ferguson, health educator at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, told the Columbus Rotary Club Tuesday afternoon at Lion Hills Center.
Blood cancers — lymphoma, leukemia and myeloma — account for 9.4% of all cancers, Ferguson said. Of those, lymphoma is the most common, at 48%; leukemia at 32%; and myeloma at 19%.
“About 185,000 people were diagnosed in 2023,” she said. “There are about 1,630,000 people living with or in remission from blood cancer. We don’t hear about it as we do breast cancer and some of the others, but the numbers are really staggering.”
The survival rate for those with blood cancer in the United States has shot up since the 1970s, she said.
For leukemia, the five-year survival rate was 34% in 1977, and rose to 69% in 2018, Ferguson said. For Hodgkin lymphoma, the survival rate has increased from 73% in 1977 to 92%, and the non-Hodgkin lymphoma survival rate has improved from 46% to 77%. Myeloma survival rates have increased from 24% to 60%.
“Those survival rates have increased because of clinical trials,” Ferguson said.
There are several types of clinical trials, Ferguson explained. Treatment trials test new drugs, and new approaches to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Prevention trials find better ways to treat disease with things like drugs, vaccines, vitamins and exercise. Screening trials test new ways to find disease early.
“Great examples of screening trials are pap smears for cervical cancer and mammograms for breast cancer or (prostate-specific antigen) tests for prostate cancer,” Ferguson said.
There are also quality of life trials that try to improve patients’ quality of life, she said, and natural history studies where researchers follow people with cancer or at-risk for cancer for a long period of time.
“(History studies) are simply observation studies,” Ferguson said.
Hopefully, clinical trials produce new drugs or treatments, Ferguson said, but they also give people today the chance to help future cancer patients.
Organizations like Vanderbilt-Ingram are working with doctors and hospitals to make clinical trials more available to the general public, Ferguson said. The more people participate, the more likely it is that the resulting treatments will work for everyone.
“These trials are for everyone,” she said. “We need people from different ages, races, genders. We need people who are healthy, people who have other conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes, and we need people with disabilities.”
Some people participate even though they themselves may not benefit, Ferguson said.
“I know a lady who has now passed away, and she had a very rare cancer,” she said. “She chose to participate in clinical trials even though she knew they would not help her, but they would help future patients who had the same cancer.”
People interested in participating in a clinical trial can talk to their doctors about local opportunities, Ferguson said. They can also directly contact Julie Ryder at Baptist Cancer Center at (901) 226-1577 or via email at [email protected]; by calling Vanderbilt-Ingram at (800) 811-8480; via the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society at www.lls.org; or via Research Match at www.researchmatch.org.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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