Precise radiation, then surgery: a new path for kidney cancer's hardest cases

Diane Gentry, 71, from Watauga, Texas, is cancer-free today — and her case hints at why. She was one of 23 patients in a UT Southwestern trial for kidney cancer that had grown into the body's largest vein, a complication doctors call a tumour thrombus. The team gave precisely targeted stereotactic radiation first, then operated. A year on, 71.4% of patients were recurrence-free, comfortably beating the 55.7% benchmark the trial set itself — and in Gentry's case, tumours in her lungs shrank even though they were never directly treated. The study, co-led by Raquibul Hannan and Vitaly Margulis and published in JAMA Oncology, followed patients for a median of about nine years.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation