liver cancer treatment

Physicians Stop Liver Cancer with Millions of Glass Beads

University of Cincinnati (UC) physicians are using a new technique that involves injecting patients with millions of tiny radioactive glass beads to control advanced, inoperable liver cancer.

No wider than a single strand of human hair, the beads kill liver cancer cells from inside the tumor.

Darryl Zuckerman, MD, offers the minimally invasive procedure, known as TheraSphere, at University Hospital and is the only physician in Ohio trained to perform it. UC’s Academic Health Center is one of 28 medical centers across the United States offering the treatment.

“The only real cure for liver cancer is an organ transplant,” explains Zuckerman, an associate professor and interventional radiologist at UC. “But this procedure allows us to stabilize the patient’s condition by controlling cancer growth and shrinking the tumor. Then we can deal with it surgically, or as a stand-alone therapy for patients who aren’t good candidates for surgery.”

This treatment is intended for patients with a form of cancer known as advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which starts in the liver’s cells and develops into one or multiple tumors that cannot be removed in surgery.

Primary liver cancer-which grows from within the organ as opposed to spreading there from another area of the body-is rare but is increasing at a very rapid rate in the United States, according to Zuckerman. HCC is the most common type of primary liver cancer in adults and accounts for 80 percent of all primary liver cancers. Colorectal, breast and gastric cancers also commonly spread to the liver.

“By delivering highly targeted radiation from inside the body,” says Zuckerman, “we can help minimize damage to surrounding tissue and slow the progression of the liver cancer for patients awaiting liver transplant. For other patients, this procedure can reduce the size of the tumor to a point where it can be removed surgically, giving patients new hope for survival.”

Two weeks before treatment patients undergo an angiogram, which allows an interventional radiologist to identify blood vessels feeding the liver tumor. Depending on the anatomy of the blood vessels, the radiologist may place metal coils in surrounding blood vessels to prevent the beads from traveling to other organs in the body.