How much time does Hugo Chavez have left?

[cosmicalstorm]

If I'm counting this right, this will be Chavez seventh radiation treatment in Cuba (and he had two surgeries so far).
Will he survive this cancer? In my eyes, it seems increasingly likely he wont make it. Any bets on how long he has left?

(Might be the wrong forum, I wasn't sure where to post it)

Venezuela's Chavez to return to Cuba for more treatment

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he will return to Cuba on Saturday for a third round of radiotherapy to treat a recurrence of his cancer.
President Chavez made the announcement during a telephone call broadcast on state television.
He said the daily radiation treatment in Havana would help him in his "battle for health and for life".

President Chavez had surgery in February to remove a second tumour from his pelvic area.
The President made the announcement a day after an emotional plea for his life at an Easter mass.

Tearful plea
Speaking through tears in his hometown of Barinas, he asked Jesus to give him more time because he had "things left to do".
"Give me your crown, Christ, give it to me, I will bleed, give me your cross, a hundred crosses, but give me life, because I still have things left to do for the (Venezuelan) people and for the homeland," he said during Thursday night's mass.

He later said the emotional plea had been "a spontaneous, sentimental thing" brought about by the presence of his family next to him at the mass.
"My mum gave me her hand with such tenderness, and Dad gave me his... and because of this, tears rolled down my face", he said.

The exact nature of President Chavez's cancer has not been disclosed, fuelling rumours that his health may be worse than officially stated.
Mr Chavez, who has been in power since 1999, has said that despite his health problems he is determined to win October's presidential election.
Last year, he had surgery and four rounds of chemotherapy in Cuba, after a baseball-sized growth was detected in his pelvic region.
After the treatment he had said he was free from cancer, only to suffer a recurrence that required surgery in February.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17647921

[mr friendly guy]

Let me get this straight. You want us to give a medical opinion regarding his prognosis over the internet based on very little information. Not information conveyed by another health professional, but from an article. Especially when we don't know what exact cancer he has (only that its in the pelvis, meaning it could be primarily a bone cancer or some other common cancer that spread to bone, for example prostate cancer commonly metastasise to bone), nor what other treatment he has. Just making sure.

However I will say this. Having 7 radiation treatments isn't unheard of. If he hasn't had chemo, radiation alone usually isn't curative per se in my limited exposure to oncology, but it does buy time, or it could be used as a purely palliative measure. Again its very hard to say based on the information.

[kc8tbe]

I'm not Chavez' physician either, but I do know that radiation exposure is cumulative and there is a limit to how many radiation treatments one can undergo at the same body site -- even if the alternative is death by cancer. Submitting to "daily" radiotherapy after seven previous, failed attempts sounds a bit desparate to me.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The idea that radiation exposure is cumulative is not definitively proved at low doses, though probably accurate for the kinds of doses in cancer therapy. Regardless, radiation is a very slow killer, and a President of a country gets to live by special medical rules, to a certain extent. Nobody in the US would hit you with a dose of radiation that would ultimately guarantee you fatal complications at some point in the future, but if he had terminal cancer and six months to live, a Cuban doctor might well be ordered by the government to give him a treatment which might deal with it yet guarantee he dies in two years.

This is all useless speculation, however, and daily radiation therapy is actually normal, you have radiation therapy over a course of weeks on a daily basis as a matter of fact. In some cases it actually is used to cure cancer in conjunction with surgery and without chemotherapy, and in others is used in combination with drugs, for example some forms of prostate cancer can actually be very effectively treated with a combination of antiandrogen therapy and radiation, so there's simply no way to tell anything at all, period, about his actual condition.

[Vehrec]

On the other hand, we know that this is a recurrence of cancer-they had it under control and he's now relapsed. Now the use of surgery indicates that the cancer was at the time considered to be early-stage, not metastasized. Radiation is also local treatment, you don't use it for the entire body. On the other hand, they didn't get it all the first time. It's not a very good thing to have happen to any cancer patient. If the cancer has migrated outside his pelvis, then the prognosis is very bad.