After years of legal wrangling, Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski appears to have prevailed in his latest showdown with the Texas Medical Board, though it remains to be seen whether the controversial Houston cancer doctor will be allowed to keep his medical license.

On Wednesday, two judges issued a 214-page ruling, dismissing nearly all of the state's most serious accusations of misconduct. The judges from the State Office of Administrative Hearings found Burzynski, 73, was liable for only a few of the more than 100 allegations against him, mostly related to failures to keep adequate medical records.

"Those are pimples, they're not cancer," Dan Cogdell, one of Burzynski's attorneys, said of the violations. "We're happy to address those minor issues."

The ruling comes two years after the state filed a formal complaint against Burzynski - an internist with no board certification or formal training in oncology - and more than two decades after the federal government tried and failed to have the doctor imprisoned for improperly administering experimental drugs.

The drugs, known as antineoplastons, an unproven and controversial type of chemotherapy that Burzynski invented, were at the center of the state's case.

Lawyers for the state medical board spent weeks presenting evidence against Burzynski last fall and earlier this year in Austin, alleging that he had promoted his experimental therapy to patients, knowing he could not legally provide it to most of them. Instead, the board alleged, Burzynski gave them normal chemotherapy drugs in combinations that have not been scientifically tested, and whose toxicities posed an unnecessary danger to patients.

Administrative Law Judges Roy Scudday and Catherine Egan found that, for the most part, the state failed to prove its case. In their ruling, the judges took the extraordinary step of lauding the defendant as "a dedicated and innovative physician" whose treatments "have saved the lives of cancer patients, both adults and children."

The judges heard testimony from several former patients who credited Burzynski's treatment for curing their cancer. But after years of clinical trials, his methods have never been proven. Terminal patients travel from all over the world to see him, often after exhausting other treatment options.

Controversy has followed the doctor ever since he immigrated from Poland in the 1970s and set up a laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine. His therapy and drugs, a collection of peptides, amino acids and amino acid derivatives he originally isolated from blood and urine, have made him a star among supporters of alternative medicine. Critics, though, have accused him of taking advantage of dying people by making promises he can't keep.

"He is a lightning rod for controversy; he always has been," Cogdell said. "The fact is, he has specialized in helping patients who are in a dark place and don't have anywhere else to turn."

The federal government has gone after Burzynski several times, most notably in 1995, when a grand jury indicted him on charges of illegal interstate commerce of experimental drugs. He was cleared but ordered to only prescribe his drug in trials approved by the Food and Drug Administration. One of his clinical trials was suspended in 2012 after the death of a 6-year-old boy from New Jersey.

The latest case against him centered on seven patients who, lured by allegedly false advertising and desperate for a cure, came to Burzynski seeking his specialized therapy but were subjected to substandard care. Only two received his famous antineoplastons therapy.

But the state failed to prove its case, the judges ruled. They did find evidence that Burzynski was guilty of eight violations of state medical rules, mostly related to paperwork errors. Other violations included inaccurately reporting a patient's tumor measurements, leading to improper treatment; failing to properly supervise research assistance; failing to disclose his ownership interest in the pharmacies where he sent his patients; and failing to fully explain changes to a patient's treatment plan.

Greg Myers, one of the attorney's who defended Burzynski, said he considered the ruling a major victory.

"When the state board filed this thing, it was a 202-page complaint," Myers said. "They admitted into evidence close to 20,000 pages of records, and they made every allegation they could think of in a pretty clear attempt to strip Dr. Burzynski of his medical license. But the judges found the doctor complied with standards of care, and he prevailed in over 95 percent of these allegations."

Burzynski's lawyers said the doctor wouldn't speak on the matter until the case was completed. Both parties have an opportunity to challenge the proposed ruling before it's finalized, and the state medical board could still punish Burzynski. That could come as early as December.

Cogdell said he's optimistic there won't be any severe sanctions and his client will be allowed to continue his work.

"I don't practice in front of the state medical board with any regularity, but my sense is this was the most exhaustive effort the state board has ever undertaken," Cogdell said. "And they lost badly."