Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center are reporting success with a new treatment method that attacks these cancerous tumors.
The radiation is aimed only at the liver using conformal radiation techniques that pinpoint precisely where the radiation beams go and not previously done by aiming at the entire liver.
This reduces the amount of radiation entering the liver by 400 percent and limiting exposure to uninfected tissue.
Edgar Ben-Josef, M.D., lead researcher says, "The patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who were entered in this trial, for example, were for the most part out of chemotherapy options at the time of referral. These are patients that we estimate would have had a life expectancy of nine, maybe 12 months. They also did not have any surgical or other local treatment options. So a median survival of 17 months in such patients is quite a substantial improvement and definitely clinically relevant."
Of the 128 patients treated, median survival was 15.8 months, significantly longer than traditional survival rates for patients with these types of tumors.
