No more cancer spots, an official statement from Carter Center website said.
In the announcement posted on Sunday, Dec 6, former president Jimmy Carter is said to have shown no signs of cancer, whether old or new, during the latest MRI scan. However, he's expected to continue with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy cancer drug that is used to treat metastatic melanoma. It works by targeting a cell receptor that promotes programmable death.
In Aug 3 the 91-year-old Carter underwent an elective surgery to remove a mass found in his liver. More than a week after, he disclosed that the cancer had already metastasized in various parts of the body. By Aug 20 he confirmed that he has a metastatic melanoma after the doctors discovered four spots on his brain.
Melanoma is considered as the most serious type of skin cancer with at least 1 in every 58 people in the United States diagnosed with it. Although it has a 5-year survival rate of 90% and is highly curable, the prognosis can turn for the worse when it's found out in the later stages.
Carter is undergoing treatment in Emory Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, where he receives stereotactic radiation, which is more precise since it targets the lesions only, as well as immunotherapy, which is meant to eliminate cancer cells that could be in other locations.
Health experts who are not part of his treatment team believed that Carter responded well with the treatment because of early detection. Carter was in Guyana last spring when he caught a cold. During tests, doctors found the mass on the liver, which they thought was cancerous. It took a while for the mass to be removed since Carter embarked on a book tour first.
Since November, Carter's office has already given hints that there are no further cancer growths. Nevertheless, other doctors want to exercise caution as it would take at least three to five years of no cancer activity before Carter can say he's cancer free.
