Which technique improves survival with liver cancer

• April 25, 2024

A European study led by the University Clinic of Navarra, in northern Spain, confirmed that radioembolization using microspheres marked with "Ytrio-90", an experimental technique so far, improves survival in patients with hepatocarcinoma (Liver cancer )

This treatment consists in releasing in the hepatic artery, or in some of its branches -according to the extension of the lesion-, spheres of 30 microns in size that discharge during 3 weeks radiation contained in them to slow the growth of abnormal cells.

The study carried out by the clinic of the University of Navarra, on hepatocarcinoma, one of the 10 most frequent cancers, with 750 thousand cases diagnosed annually worldwide, included 325 patients, 97 of them interned in the university clinic.

All patients had inoperable primary liver cancer and were treated by multidisciplinary teams that included hepatologists , oncologists , radiologists interventionists and specialists in nuclear medicine .

The study provides real evidence of the survival achieved with radioembolization, even when the disease It is already very advanced and the patient has few treatment options

The study also involved 5 Italian and 2 German hospitals. The conclusions were published in the journal Hepatology, the one with the greatest impact in the world in its specialty .

At present, the Clinic of the University of Navarra, is the center with the greatest activity in Europe in the application of radioembolization with spheres marked with Yttrium-90. In fact, in the last 7 years, more than 300 treatments of this type have been performed in this clinic, which yields an average of between 40 and 50 radioembolizations per year.

The Mayo Clinic , delves into the subject of radioembolization in this video:

Video Medicine: Demystifying Medicine 2017: Hepatocellular Cancer and Liver Transplantation (April 2024).