Minimally-Invasive, Image-Guided Cancer Treatment Improves Outcomes

• Under the guidance of MRI or ultrasound, physicians can place radioactive "seeds" – about the size of grains of rice – inside the prostate where the seeds can deliver the radiation dose directly to the cancerous tissue. This minimally invasive procedure, called brachytherapy, results in lower complication rates, including chronic side effects such as urinary incontinence and impotence. ^{1, 2} There is no need for an incision, sutures, or general anesthesia. Brachytherapy is performed in about an hour, and patients can return to normal activities in a day or two.³ Radical surgery, on the other hand, can require a three to seven day hospitalization and weeks of recovery.⁴
  • Some 87 percent of the patients with low-risk disease who received brachytherapy in one study showed no signs of recurrence 10 years later.⁵

  • Another study found that this procedure is equally effective in African-American males whose five-year survival rates from prostate cancer have been lower than those for all races combined.⁶

• Liver-cancer patients are living longer than they used to because of an image-guided therapy called chemoembolization.

  Liver-cancer patients are living longer than they used to because of an image-guided therapy called chemoembolization. Source: J.F. Geschwind, Johns Hopkins Hospital and RSNA

  • Under the guidance of X-ray angiography, physicians insert a catheter through the patient's arteries to the liver and inject a high-dose of chemotherapy into the cancerous tissue. Next, the catheter releases an embolizing material that closes the blood vessels that feed the tumor. The result: the chemotherapy is trapped inside the tumor, and the tumor dies.⁷

  • A systematic review of 61 randomized clinical trials concluded that "chemoembolization improves survival of patients with unresectable HCC [inoperable liver cancer] and may become the standard of treatment."⁸ Chemoembolization is also much less invasive than alternative care, including chemotherapy, transplantation, or surgery. Click here to view the study

  • Physicians at Johns Hopkins University report similar results. In more than 350 liver cancer patients with inoperable liver cancer, survival rates were significantly higher for the patients who received chemoembolization. ⁹
    1. 83 percent at 1 year with chemoembolization versus 35 percent without
    2. 61 percent at 2 years with chemoembolization versus 14 percent without
    3. 39 percent at 3 years with chemoembolization versus 5 percent without

  • The median survival for these patients is 26 months, with significant improvement in quality of life and lower costs for the surgery.¹⁰

1 and 2-Year Survival Rates with Chemoembolization A Comparison of Two 2002 Clinical Trials
STUDY AUTHOR	SURVIVAL % AT 1 YEAR		SURVIVAL % AT 2 YEARS
	With image-guided chemoembolization	Without	With image-guided chemoembolization	Without
Llovet	82	63	63	27
Lo	57	32	31	11
Sources: "Randomized controlled trial of transarterial lipiodol chemoembolization for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma," Lo et al in Hepatology; 35; 1164-1171, 2002; and "Arterial embolization or chemoembolization versus symptomatic treatment in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma: a randomized controlled trial," 359:1734-1739, The Lancet, 2002, as reported in "Systematic Review of Randomized Trials for Unresectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Chemoembolization Improves Survival," by Josep M Llovet and Jordi Bruix, Hepatology, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2003.