Overview of Interventional Oncology
Interventional oncology, practiced by interventional radiologists, is one of four parts of a multidisciplinary team approach in the treatment of cancer and cancer related disorders. The others include medical oncology, surgical oncology and radiation oncology.
Interventional oncology procedures provide minimally invasive, targeted treatment of cancer. Image guidance is used in combination with the most current innovations available to treat cancerous tumors without medicating or affecting other parts of the body.
Interventional oncology is broken into categories of local versus regional therapy meaning a specific tumor is treated directly or a region of an organ, usually the liver, containing multiple lesions is treated.
Local therapies involve placing a needle or probe directly into the tumor and freezing or burning the tumor using the most up to date imaging techniques. This can be done in the lung, liver, bone, kidney, adrenal gland and other sites.
Regional therapies involved injecting a substance into a whole lobe of the liver to treat multiple tumors through a catheter in the hepatic artery (liver artery). These substances include radioactive particles and/or chemotherapy particles and have been shown to improve survival in many types of tumors over chemotherapy alone.
Other adjunctive procedures include placement of port-a-caths for delivery of systemic chemotherapy (chemotherapy by a medical oncologist through a special IV). Long term catheters to drain fluid from around the lungs or from the abdomen can be placed in cancer patients who are requiring frequent drainage as well.
Liver Cancer Treatment Helps Determined Denverite
Watch an interview with the first woman in Colorado to receive a new procedure to treat liver cancer performed by Dr. Charles Nutting. Aired November 8, 2008 on CBS 4 news.
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