SAN ANTONIO — A chemotherapy drug that was tested on patients in San Antonio has shown to significantly reduce the chances of bladder cancer coming back.
UT Health San Antonio was one of many institutions nationwide that took part in the clinical trial. They looked at the effectiveness of a drug called gemcitabine. After tumors are removed, the solution is administered to the patient for an hour.
"This instillation, which seems trivial, just one hour after surgery, can significantly impact the cancer coming back in the future," said Dr. Robert Svatek, a UT Health Center urologist and the university's study leader.
The study observed 406 patients who were recently diagnosed with bladder cancer or had low-grade bladder cancer. The patients were divided into two groups. One group received a placebo and the second group received the drug.
After four years, researchers found that for the entire group, gemcitabine reduced the risk of recurrence by 34 percent compared to the placebo treatment. For patients with low-grade bladder cancer, the risk of recurrence was reduced by 47 percent.
Harris Sterling, who took part in the study, was diagnosed with low-grade bladder cancer six years ago.
"The cause of me getting this was that I smoked for 50 years," Sterling said. "I don't know if I had the placebo or the actual drug, but be that as it may, I've been cancer-free for six years and no side effects, nothing."
Dr. Svatek said that UT-Health San Antonio and all of the patients who took part in the study played a major role in continuing the trial.
"When I came to San Antonio, this trial was almost going to be shut down," Dr. Svatek recalled. "Right here in San Antonio, we put the most patients in the trial nationwide, or if not the most, the second-most. We turned it around. So our efforts right here in this clinic and this facility turned this trial around. It means a lot to us."
The results of the clinical trial were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.