Death of Tom Parker: what cancer took away the singer of The Wanted?

Tom Parker had a brain tumor

It was in 2020 that Tom Parker revealed the existence of his cancer and publicly announced to his community that he intended to fight. Despite his courage and determination, yesterday, Wednesday March 30, 2022, the singer of The Wanted, died at the age of 33, following a cancer called glioblastoma. While he “fought until the very end”, as his wife announced on Instagram, his stage 4 glioblastoma was incurable. Since the announcement of his tumor, Tom Parker had set up a charity project to fight against this too rare tumor to arouse the interest of the scientific community.

According to the National Cancer Institute, glioblastoma accounts for 20% of all brain tumors. This cancer is “grows rapidly and spreads to multiple areas of the brain”. Indeed, doctors would have predicted to Tom Parker that 18 months to live when the tumor was diagnosed. He had nevertheless decided to follow radiotherapy and chemotherapy sessions, but unfortunately they could not save the singer.

What is glioblastoma?

To characterize glioblastoma, we speak of a tumor rather than a cancer. And for good reason, it develops only in the cranial box. Indeed, in general, this brain tumor does not spread to other areas of the brain or body, as may be the case with cancer at the metastatic level. In practice, as described in Doctor Dhermainoncologist-radiation therapist, “Glioblastoma corresponds to grade 4 glioma”. When the tumor is grade 1 or 2, it is considered benign while it is malignant when it is grade 3 or 4.

Glioblastoma does not cause the occurrence of specific symptoms, which can make its diagnosis late and/or difficult. However, this tumor can cause headaches, nausea and vomiting. These are indicators of intracranial hypertension. It happens that “patients take longer to respond and react to requests“, as the specialist points out.

Are the treatments effective?

The treatment of glioblastoma is based on surgery. This intervention must be carried out by a multidisciplinary team, given the rarity of this tumor and in order to increase the patient’s chances of survival. However, Dr. Dhermain points out that surgery almost never removes the entire tumor. In the case of Tom Parker, the tumor was inoperable, as in 30% of glioblastoma cases.

The alternative to surgical treatment consists of daily radiotherapy sessions combined with chemotherapy. Temozolomide, for example, is an anticancer drug taken by mouth that “provides an increase in median survival of 3-4 months, bringing it to 14-15 months”says the oncologist.