Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has completed another course of treatment for a malignant tumor doctors found on her pancreas.
This, according to a statement released by the Court Friday afternoon.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg today completed a three-week course of stereotactic ablative radiation therapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The focused radiation treatment began on August 5 and was administered on an outpatient basis to treat a tumor on her pancreas. The abnormality was first detected after a routine blood test in early July, and a biopsy performed on July 31 at Sloan Kettering confirmed a localized malignant tumor. As part of her treatment, a bile duct stent was placed. The Justice tolerated treatment well. She canceled her annual summer visit to Santa Fe, but has otherwise maintained an active schedule. The tumor was treated definitively and there is no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body. Justice Ginsburg will continue to have periodic blood tests and scans. No further treatment is needed at this time.
The radiation treatment is the latest in a series of cancer bouts the senior justice has endured over the last two decades. She was first diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999. Ten years later, Ginsburg received her first pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
Last November, the justice fractured three ribs after falling in her office. Then a month later, she underwent surgery for a left-lung lobectomy.
Ginsburg is the oldest justice on the Supreme Court at age 86. President Bill Clinton appointed her in 1993.
A movie about Ginsburg’s life called “On the Basis of Sex” was released in December 2018.
– – –
Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of Battleground State News. Follow Zachery on Twitter.
