Cancer treatment pioneered in Melbourne being hailed as a global lifesaver
By ANISunday, June 13, 2010
MELBOURNE - A new, revolutionary cancer treatment pioneered in Melbourne could soon emerge as a global lifesaver.
More than 100 Victorians with inoperable liver cancer have successfully been treated with the SIRT (selective internal radiation therapy).
These treatments are part of a Melbourne-led international human trial of SIRT, used in conjunction with the chemotherapy drug sorafenib.
For the procedure, tiny radioactive beads - about one-third the width of a human hair - are injected into an artery near the groin.
Thereafter, the beads lodge in the liver releasing a radiation dose over a number of days, shrinking tumours.
A Victorian woman suffering from incurable liver cancer has undergone the therapy and associate Prof Peter Gibbs, a medical oncologist from the Royal Melbourne Hospital, believes she is cured.
“Her tumours slowly disappeared and she remains tumour free. I am convinced that she is cured,” The Herald Sun quoted Prof Gibbs, as saying.
Prof Gibbs, who leads the world’s biggest clinical trial of the therapy, added that in about 5 per cent of patients tumours disappeared while in most others cases the treatment was prolonging lives. (ANI)
