New Outpatient Therapy
at UMC Targets Primary Liver Cancer;
Tiny Beads Offer Hope in Inoperable
Cases
Jan 13,
2006
Jan 16, 2006
From: Katie Riley, (520)
626-4828
University Medical
Center is offering a new outpatient treatment for patients
with inoperable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a cancer that originates in the
liver.
UMC is one of 20 medical centers nationwide and the only
one in
Two patients already have undergone TheraSphere
treatment this fall at UMC, said interventional radiologist Michael O'Brien, MD, assistant professor of
radiology at The University of Arizona
College of Medicine. "TheraSphere uses a radioactive ingredient,
Yttrium-90, to attack cancerous tumors in the liver while minimizing the impact
on healthy tissue," Dr. O'Brien said.
According to the American Cancer Society, this year more
than 17,000 new cases of liver cancer will be diagnosed in the United States,
most of them HCC. One of the causes is hepatitis C, which leads to HCC in about
5 percent of cases. Four million Americans are currently infected with hepatitis
C, and the number is expected to increase to 10.8 million in the next 10 to 12
years.
But UMC patient John
Jenkins of
By the time HCC is diagnosed, the liver tumors are
frequently large and difficult to remove, and generally cannot be treated
surgically. Mr. Jenkins' tumor was 14 centimeters at diagnosis last year. He
underwent traditional chemotherapy before starting TheraSphere
treatment.
In the TheraSphere outpatient procedure, an
interventional radiologist makes a small incision into the patient's leg and
inserts a catheter into a major blood vessel. Guided by fluoroscopy - an X-ray
imaging technique that projects views of the inside of the body - the physician
then snakes the catheter up through the blood vessels to the hepatic artery,
which feeds the liver. The patient is conscious throughout the
procedure.
A nuclear medicine specialist in conjunction with the
interventional radiologist then injects millions of microscopic radioactive
beads or "microspheres" through the catheter into the hepatic artery. Each glass
bead is about half the diameter of a human hair, or 20 to 30 microns in
diameter.
The microspheres deliver radiation directly to the tumor
in doses that are significantly higher that what is possible from traditional
external radiation. Over a few days, the radioactivity decays and diminishes to
a non-detectable level.
"The remarkable characteristic of TheraSphere is that
the radiation remains fully contained within the sphere. The radiation is
delivered only to tissues within a few millimeters of the sphere. There is
negligible radiation to organs other than the liver," said nuclear medicine
specialist Lisa S. Gobar, MD, UA
assistant professor of radiology.
"The other convenient aspect is that the family is not exposed to
significant amounts of radiation, so the patient does not have to be in the
hospital after the procedure," she said.
The procedure takes about four hours. Side effects,
which may include lethargy, are considered minor compared to the high-dose
chemotherapy that traditionally has been used to treat inoperable liver cancer.
TheraSphere therapy provides an alternative treatment to
those patients not eligible for surgery. And, although the treatment is
considered palliative rather than curative, the therapy buys time for patients
until they are able to receive an alternate therapy or become eligible for
surgery or liver transplant.
UMC is in the process of reviving its liver transplant
program and hopes to begin offering the surgery in the near
future.
TheraSphere is a registered trademark of Theragenics
Corp. and is used under license of MDS Nordion (www.mds.nordion.com.)
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Assignment
editors please note:
TheraSphere patient John Jenkins of
sguthrie@email.arizona.edu
To read about the
expansion of the UA College of Medicine in Phoenix go to http://www.phoenix.medicine.arizona.edu/About/News/Campus/