High-tech tools in Grand River’s arsenal
Two new advanced procedures give liver cancer patients new hope
KITCHENER — Two new advanced procedures are being used at Grand River Hospital for liver cancer patients.
“It gives us another weapon to treat cancer,” said interventional radiologist Dr. Darren Knibutat.
He demonstrated one of the treatments — radiofrequency ablation — on a cow liver Friday.
Radiofrequency ablation uses a small probe that’s inserted through the skin using medical imaging guidance to position it within the tumour.
Once it is in the right spot, thin prongs shaped like umbrella arms come out of the end of the probe and go into the tumour to deliver the radiofrequency energy that burns the tissue.
“It will kill all the tissue cells that are there and treat the patient’s cancer,” Knibutat said.
This part doesn’t take very long, 10 minutes for a treatment, and it’s done twice with the heat slowly increasing to ensure all targeted tissue is treated.
Overall, the treatment takes a couple of hours because the timeconsuming part is getting the probe into the correct spot, guided by medical imaging.
“It’s getting to the lesions, making sure we’re in the right position,” Knibutat said.
The patient is sedated. Usually, it is done as a day procedure.
“They don’t typically feel a whole lot during the procedure,” Knibutat said.
The new technique has only been used on a small number of patients since being introduced at the Kitchener hospital, but the results so far are good with no tumour recurrence.
“The patients we have treated have responded very well,” Knibutat said.
It’s another tool to use when treating cancer, joining chemotherapy and surgery. It’s a good option for a patient who can’t undergo surgery or has exhausted chemotherapy.
Knibutat sliced open the cow liver to show the effect of the radio frequency ablation.
“All this tissue is dead,” said Knibutat, pointing to the area treated. “The tumour’s been destroyed.”
Pink tissue surrounded the circle of dead tissue. In a patient, that dead tissue eventually would be reabsorbed by the body.
“Over time, it’s gone,” Knibutat said.
The other new procedure is transarterial chemoembolization, which uses two methods to destroy tumours. First, a small catheter is inserted into the arteries supplying blood to the tumour, which then fills the arteries with microscopic particles or specialized oil droplets to cut off the tumour’s blood supply.
Those same particles or droplets carry chemotherapy drugs that deliver a high doses of localized chemotherapy directly into the tumour. These patients may require a hospital stay to monitor the effects of the medication on liver function.
Both procedures are for primary liver cancer or cancer that has spread from the colon to the liver. Grand River is working to expand these procedures to other forms of cancer.
The hospital is able to offer these new treatment options thanks to donations that helped it buy a new interventional radiology unit in 2013, along with a new CT scanner this year.