The First 睾丸癌 Cure

An adage in health care declares if you wish to be famous in the medical field you should discover a new disease and attach your name to it. 因此, most of the proper names we read and hear in this discipline are those of physicians and scientists. 因此, we have Hodgkin’s disease (19th century British pathologist), Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia (20th century Swedish physician and researcher), and Huntington’s chorea (American physician practicing in Long Island around the turn of the 20th century), 还有很多其他的.

远不常见, researchers confer the name of the patient in whom a condition was first described. 因此, 接触因子, another name for clotting factor XII, was first found to be deficient in a man named John Hageman in the 1950s. Physicians tend to steal the glory. 病人 deserve a lot more recognition for the contributions they have made to the progress of medicine. In a month dedicated to furthering awareness of testicular cancer, I can’t think of a more worthy person to acknowledge than John 克莱兰德, the first man cured of an advanced form of this disease.

克莱兰德’s story resonates on an emotional as well as clinical level. 年轻的新婚夫妇, just starting out in life in the early 1970s, he developed testicular cancer at 22 years of age. Surgery removed the diseased organ, but the aggressive cancer had already spread, producing large tumors in his lungs. Hope faded with every failed application of existing chemotherapy drugs. His weight fell to a measly 106 pounds, a shadow of his former robust self. At the time, 19 of every 20 men afflicted with advanced testicular cancer died of their disease. Surely John 克莱兰德 would soon share their fate. 最后, he sat with his oncologist at Indiana University, 拉里·艾因霍恩, reviewed his most recent chest x-rays showing lungs almost completely taken over by the cancer, and discussed one remaining last-ditch option, a new experimental drug called cisplatin, which could be added to a couple of other drugs called bleomycin and vinblastine. 克莱兰德, 他背靠着墙, 同意, thinking even if he did not personally benefit from the new treatment perhaps other young men in the future might.

The first month was nightmarish. Cisplatin is one of the most nauseating chemotherapy drugs in use, and 克莱兰德 took the drug in the days before modern, highly effective antinausea drugs were available. Sick beyond comprehension and taxed almost beyond endurance, he battled through. When he returned to the hospital to begin his second round of treatment, he and his doctors were astonished to discover radiologists could find no traces of the cancer in his lungs. 克莱兰德 lived another fifty years after completing treatment and never dealt with the disease again, a career teacher and the father of three children who otherwise might never have existed. 他是, 据我们所知, the first man to be cured of a metastatic cancer arising from an organ other than the blood or lymphatic system.

In 2023, the old mortality statistic of a 95% death rate has flipped on its head. A man diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer now may expect a 95% cure rate. 我们理应尊敬博士. Einhorn for stepping into the unknown and achieving a landmark in modern oncology care. We owe no less recognition to John 克莱兰德, the pioneer on the other side of the needle.