Comment Re:Multiple myeloma (Score 1) 76
My 67y dad was (almost accidentally - he was being scanned for something else) diagnosed with an advanced stage of multiple myeloma in 2003 and was given a single-digit% chance to live, at most 6 mos. Figuring he had little to lose, he signed up for experimental stem-cell replacement therapy at the U of MN hospital which was expected to increase his lifespan from 6mo to 2-3yr.
It was arduous but by 2006 he was pronounced *entirely cancer free* living another 12 years before finally succumbing to pneumonia (more or less the result of a severe stroke a few years before).
As I see, today that same condition/age I see survival rates now north of 60%.
Advances in cancer treatments have really been remarkable.
I'm thinking you mean a bone marrow transplant. (Which is a form of stem cell transplant.) Admittedly when my dad was dying of renal cell carcinoma around the same time, I was reading there was an experimental program to treat that with a bone marrow transplant as well. The results of that were pretty much 20% of the time it cured it, 60% of the time it did nothing and 20% of the time it killed the patient in about 2 weeks. Admittedly we didn't go any further looking into it. (Hopefully the odds a better these days.)