Dolph Lundgren, the Swedish actor best known for his villainy in the Rocky film series, revealed that he is “finally cancer-free” nearly nine years after he was first diagnosed with a tumor on his kidney. In the following years, numerous tumors developed throughout his body.

 

In a recent Instagram video filmed from a hospital bed, Lundgren shared he was about to undergo a lung ablation, a relatively new nonsurgical treatment that destroys tumor tissue with either intense heat (microwave ablation) or cold (cryoablation), according to the Mayo Clinic.

 

“Here I am at UCLA. I’m about to go in and get rid of that last tumor,” Lundgren, 67, said in the video. “Since there are no cancer cells in my body anymore, then I guess I’ll be cancer-free so I’m looking forward to this procedure.”

 

 

The film and fitness star first publicly discussed his cancer last year on an episode of In Depth with Graham Bensinger. He said he was diagnosed in 2015 after doctors discovered a tumor on his kidney. After the tumor was successfully removed, Lundgren went into remission until 2020, when an MRI revealed several tumors on his liver, lung, stomach, spine and outside the kidneys.

 

 

His medical team successfully removed six tumors. A tumor on his liver, however, had grown to the size of a lemon, and doctors could not remove it. One expert told Lundgren he had two to three years left to live.

 

“It wasn’t looking good,” Lundgren told Fox News. “I mean, there was a doctor in London who basically told me you should stop working and spend more time with your family. Then I realized it was serious.”

 

 

In 2022, a second opinion from one doctor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) revealed that Lundgren was receiving the wrong treatments.

 

Alexandra Drakaki, MD, PhD, an associate professor at UCLA, identified a mutation that changed the course of Lundgren’s treatment. Within three months of starting a new treatment plan, his tumor shrank between 20% and 30%.

 

“It’s been a rough ride and really taught me how to live in the moment and enjoy every moment of life. I mean, it’s the only way to go,” he said via Instagram.

 

To read a collection of Cancer Health articles about gene variants and how they can affect treatment, click #Genetics. And to learn more about the different types of #Cancer Treatment, check out Cancer Treatment 101. It reads in part:

 

Cancer is not one but many diseases. How it is treated varies widely depending on cancer type and location, whether it has spread from its original site to other parts of the body (known as metastasis), genetic characteristics and patient preferences.

 

Cancer treatment has evolved rapidly in recent years from surgery, radiation and chemotherapy to new types of targeted therapy and immunotherapy that help the immune system fight cancer.

 

These newer types of treatment are an example of precision or personalized medicine, tailored to individual patients. Today’s targeted and immune-based therapies can be very effective, but they do not work for everyone, and we don’t yet fully understand how to tell in advance who will benefit.

 

Experimental therapies have traditionally been tested one drug at a time on one type of cancer at a time. But new therapies are increasingly being studied in combination regimens for first-line treatment rather than waiting for one drug to fail and then trying another. In addition, there is a growing trend toward treatments that work against cancer with specific genetic characteristics, regardless of where it is located in the body.