Former President Jimmy Carter, 91, announced that he is free from cancer at his Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia.
"When I went this week, they didn't find any cancer at all," Carter broke the news at the class, amid surprised responses and cheering. "So I have good news."
"A lot of people prayed for me," Carter said in the video of the event covered by NBC, "and I appreciate that."
He had said in August that he was suffering from a deadly melanoma of skin, which was first discovered in his liver and taken out, but spread to his brain.
"My most recent M.R.I. brain scan did not reveal any signs of the original cancer spots nor any new ones," he said in a statement.
The doctors had found four lesions in his brain. He had been taking the treatment for melanoma, which included a targeted radiation therapy and immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab.
Strong narrow beams of radiation were targeted at the lesions in brain, to avoid damage to other areas of brain. He will continue with the immunotherapy treatment of pembrolizumab to prevent cancer from developing in other parts of his body. The drug pembrolizumab is given to patients with advanced forms of cancer that cannot be treated with other medications.
"His greatest risk was that he was going to get disease developed in new locations, but seemingly that hasn't happened," Dr. Dale Shepard, a Cleveland oncologist, said.
Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld of American Cancer Society told CNN that he was aware of the kind of treatment Carter was receiving, and called his healing the "best news possible," given a difficult prognosis.
"Metastatic melanoma is a serious and potentially life-threatening illness. Whether we can call it a miracle or not, it will take time to tell. It's the best news possible in a difficult situation.
President Carter will receive scans on his whole body every three months for at least one year after the tests reveal no lesions.
"President Carter's doctors certainly will continue close surveillance as they would for any patient in this situation," said Dr. Lichtenfeld. "One hopes that by using immunotherapy the body can respond to whatever happens but cancer cells are clever and can develop workarounds for the various treatments."
Carter served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. People from around the country had been coming to see him preach after the news of his cancer was made public.
"We were very, very surprised," Jill Stuckey, a member of Maranatha Baptist Church was quoted as saying by The Washington Post. "This was just wonderful news out of the blue."
The Plains mayor Boze Godwin, who was present at the church when the announcement was made said, "I had talked to him recently, and he had told us this new therapy was working really well. So I was very happy to hear that. But then to hear him say this morning that it was gone - that caught us all very flat-footed. He didn't even make a big deal of it. He just said it at the beginning of class."
