Doctors may have found a way to treat Leukemia successfully without putting children at risk for brain damage.
The new research is from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where doctors studied nearly 500 children who had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
The kids were treated with drugs only and did not get brain radiation. The addition of brain radiation has been, more or less, the standard of care for patients at high risk of a relapse, but can leave patients with learning disabilities.
In the current study, 86-percent of the patients survived at least five years without a relapse. Most relapses occur within a year or two of diagnosis. Overall, 94-percent of kids in the study were still alive five years after diagnosis.
The research is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, June 24, 2009.
