For adult patients with brainstem high-grade gliomas, surgically removing the entire tumor may add many months or potentially years of survival beyond that offered by radiation and chemotherapy, according to results of a medical records study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
How’s this for a paradox: The better cancer centers become at keeping patients alive, the more expensive cancer care becomes. This brutal tradeoff hits harder in rural areas, where the cancer burden is higher and the investigator and clinical trial representation is lower.
