Chemotherapy can shrink a tumor before surgery in certain hard-to-cure cancers, helping patients survive longer, researchers reported on Saturday. Patients with pancreatic cancer -- a highly deadly cancer -- lived longer when they got a drug called Gemzar along with surgery, the doctors told a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Orlando, Reuters reported. A second team found that patients with a usually fatal form of esophageal or stomach cancer who got a chemotherapy cocktail before surgery lived longer than patients who got surgery alone. The studies offer new options for patients who usually can only hope they will be the rare ones helped by surgery, the researchers said. Dr. Peter Neuhaus of the Charite University Medical School in Berlin, Germany and colleagues tested Eli Lilly and Co's cancer drug Gemzar on 179 patients with pancreatic cancer that could be surgically removed. --more 2322 Local Time 2022 GMT
