Cryotherapy

It has been known for a long time that freezing of living tissue to below about -20°C, results in death of that tissue. This knowledge led to the development in the early 1990s of a treatment for liver cancer known as liver cryotherapy or liver cryosurgery. It entails a major operation in which the liver secondaries are frozen using liquid nitrogen probes at -196°C. Such treatment leads to death of the frozen cancerous tissue, which is left in place for the body to deal with. The Wakefield Clinic was one of the first centres in the world to offer this treatment and has significant experience with the technique. The treatment was taken up by many major cancer treatment centres throughout the World, although is less commonly used now, following the development of an alternative technique known as RFA or radiofrequency ablation. This is simply a different method of destroying tumour, using heat rather than cold. For a number of reasons we believe cryotherapy has advantages over RFA, and for that reason prefer to continue with its use. It can be particularly helpful when used in association with liver resection, where this is not able to remove all tumour.

Liver cryotherapy is most suitable for patients with a limited number of secondaries confined to the liver, where none are larger than about 5 cm. We usually combine it with a minimum of six months of hepatic artery chemotherapy (see below) and by so doing have achieved an average survival time of 24 months in patients who might, without treatment, have been expected to survive only 8-12 months. This time can be further extended with the use of systemic chemotherapy, when trouble re-occurs. As with any major surgery some risks are involved but on the whole the treatment is well tolerated. The risk of dying having this surgery at the Wakefield Clinic is 1-2 %. While this treatment can not be expected to bring about a cure it does seem to extend life for most treated patients.

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