Woman cancer-free after UK's first liver transplant for advanced bowel cancer
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A 32-year-old woman is cancer-free after undergoing the UK's first liver transplant for advanced bowel cancer. Bianca Perea, a trainee lawyer from Manchester, was diagnosed with the most advanced kind of bowel cancer in November 2021, with doctors telling her they aimed to prolong her life rather than find a cure.
But, alongside other treatments including targeted drug therapy, chemotherapy and surgery, the transplant has been a huge success and Ms Perea now has no signs of cancer anywhere in her body. Ms Perea first visited her GP in Wigan after feeling constipated and bloated. After tests, a colonoscopy and a biopsy, she was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer, which had spread to all eight segments of her liver.
Ms Perea accepted the diagnosis, but said she refused to believe the outlook was so bleak. "I don't want to sound kind of ignorant or arrogant or anything like that but I just didn't feel in my gut that that was going to be it," she said. Her mother asked about a possible transplant at that stage but was told it was not a feasible treatment.
Calls for more research into flat head syndrome in babies and whether helmet therapy works. Number of patients in hospital with flu in England quadruples in month. Scientists build tiny virtual reality goggles for mice. Ms Perea had 37 rounds of a targeted drug called panitumumab plus chemotherapy for two and a half years.
