Liver cancer lifeline that could save thousands

ALEADING surgeon has invented a device that makes life- saving surgery possible for liver cancer patients. Until now such tumours were often seen as almost inoperable due to the risk of massive blood loss. But the device developed by Professor Nagy Habib restricts bleeding to minute amounts by using radio waves to seal tissue quickly.

The hand- held machine has already made a huge impact and has been taken up by surgeons in the U.S.

At present, liver tumours are difficult to remove unless they can be shrunk by drug therapy or are located in a part of a liver where the bleeding will not be too rapid.

Sometimes the loss of blood during surgery is so great that patients can’t be transfused quickly enough.

‘Liver surgery can be tricky and blood loss is one of the biggest problems,’ says Professor Habib, head of liver services at London’s Hammersmith Hospital. ‘The liver is naturally engorged with blood and we have to find ways of operating without losing too much.’

So far more than 100 patients have benefited from the Habib Resection Device. It delivers high energy radio waves into tissue surrounding a tumour via a series of electrodes. The heat they deliver dries and seals off blood vessels within 40 seconds. A surgeon can then safely remove a tumour without having to worry about stemming major blood loss and having to transfuse huge amounts of blood.

In normal liver surgery as much as 20 pints of blood can be lost but with Professor Habib’s groundbreaking machine barely a thimbleful of the patient’s blood is lost.

He says: ‘Sometimes drugs can only shrink tumours so far and then surgery is needed. Where the tumour is situated is almost as important as its size.

‘Being able to effectively clamp off the blood supply using heat means we can remove just about any liver tumour.’

The development is a big plus to the thousands of cancer patients each year who find that the disease has spread from its original site to the liver.

‘ We call these secondaries and they invariably go to the liver, particularly in bowel cancer,’ says Professor Habib. ‘If we can get the tumour out, the patient has a reasonable chance of surviving.’

At present 20,000 bowel cancer patients a year die from liver cancer. Many are deemed to have inoperable tumours because of the difficulty of surgery.

Professor Habib hopes that the situation will now change for many of these patients.

One of these is 74- year- old Myrtle Carter, from Kensal Rise, North London.

The widowed former hospital worker had been operated on for bowel cancer two years ago, but earlier this year doctors scanned her and discovered that the cancer had spread to her liver.

‘I was warned the cancer could come back and I was also told that getting it out of the liver is very difficult,’ she says. ‘But I was approached by a doctor from Professor Habib’s team and offered this new bloodless operation.

‘ I went home about five days after surgery and after a couple of days taking it easy I was around the house cleaning and out doing some shopping.’

The machine, which is still being used only at the Hammersmith, costs £1,600 and will eventually be sold to other UK hospitals.

Professor Habib, originally from Egypt, also plans to sell it to developing countries at a reduced price to be used for safe surgery in remote locations where there are no blood transfusion or intensive care facilities.