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 NEW YORK (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Osteosarcoma is a rare childhood bone cancer that can be fatal because it spreads to the lungs. But now a new chemotherapy is being studied that not only minimizes side effects, but better targets the tumors.
Cheryl Hatton is living a parent's worst nightmare. "She used to tell me she wished she died because it hurt too much, all the time," Hatton says. "It's like watching someone torture your child week after week."
Her 17-year-old daughter Rebecca West has osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer that spread to her lungs and required aggressive chemotherapy.
"It's a little hard because I'm a girl and losing your hair is not fun, and being away from school and friends is a little hard," West says. But now she is trying a new type of chemo. It's inhaled instead of given through an IV. A tent is used, so the chemo doesn't get in the atmosphere.
 "Inhalation chemotherapy is a means of targeting chemotherapy that it goes selectively to the lungs and has much lower concentrations in the blood stream," Richard Gorlick, M.D., a pediatric oncologist at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York, tells Ivanhoe.
The drug being inhaled is cisplatin. For the clinical trial, it's being inhaled and given through an IV. More chemo reaches the cancer cells, but patients experience fewer side effects.
So far, it's shrunk West's tumor, but she says she gets a little nauseous. "I try to be positive on it 'cause you don't always wanna be negative about it all the time and feeling sorry for yourself."
 It's that attitude that keeps her mom strong as she watches with hope.
Dr. Gorlick says this can't be used as a replacement yet, but if the study is successful, in the future inhalation chemotherapy can be used to treat any cancer that begins in the lungs or spreads there. Osteosarcoma is fatal in about 90 percent of cases when the disease has spread to the lungs.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Sharon Butler
Children's Hospital at Montefiore
(718) 920-4014
subtler@montefiore.org
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