They were handled in very good standard way. UNM officials, however, agree that Duncan should have updated her treatments of acute lymphoblastic leukemia no later than 1989, and they announced in the spring of 1998 that about 110 children with the disease had not received recommended treatments. An internal UNM study and National Cancer Institute statistics show lower survival rates for children treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia at University of New Mexico Hospital than elsewhere. The university argues the number of patients treated here is too small to draw valid statistical comparisons. UNM also has been studying whether another 80 or so children from an earlier time period also didn't get the treatment they should have.
Chemotherapy is a blunt weapon.
The chemicals that destroy cancer cells damage healthy cells as well, leading to serious side effects that can be life-threatening. As leukemia treatments were studied in the 1970s and '80s, doctors found that the harder they hit children with chemotherapy in the first weeks after diagnosis, the better luck they had keeping the cancer from coming back. That changed the approach to treatment and doctors began using more chemotherapy drugs in the first weeks. They used those protocols, with some changes, until 1996. As early as 1981, UNMH doctors could have switched to newer protocols that had higher survival rates.