June 28, 2001 – Dr. Roy Schneider was part of a team of physicians at Howard University who operated on a 64-year-old patient in May by using an experimental form of treatment for pancreatic cancer, according to an issue of the Medical Bulletin of the District of Columbia published on June 21.
Schneider, the immediate past governor of the Virgin Islands, and Drs. Alfred Goldson and Paul Sugarbaker developed a new procedure that involves surgically implanting radiation capsules directly into a patient's tumor while also using chemotherapy to treat the cancer.
According to the publication, the radioactive pellets injected into the patient's tumor will remain in the body and emit radiation to the pancreas for a year. In theory, the radiation will not go past the tissue outside the pancreas and will dissolve internally over a one-year period.
Pancreatic cancer afflicts men more often than women. The first-year survival rate for those with the disease is 10 percent, according to the Medical Bulletin. Few patients with pancreatic cancer are found to be operable because the cancer is often not diagnosed until its advanced stages.
