A new breakthrough cancer treatment may help extend life, even though its methods are unorthodox. The new therapy involves bathing one organ by itself in chemotherapy. A study performed in the UK found that patients that had this ‘PHP’ treatment lived as long as five times more before the cancer started to spread.
Now patients in the UK are able to receive the therapy as well. Cancer specialists are calling this a landmark in cancer treatment. The treatment was pioneered in the UK at the Southampton general Hospital where doctors state that this may help to reduce the amount of side-effects that patients usually suffer with chemo due to the fact that the amount of tissue that is exposed to healthy tissues is reduced.
While chemotherapy rugs are able to attack cancer drugs, they also attack healthy cells at the same time often causing some very unpleasant side effects that make those fighting cancer completely miserable. If the new treatment does not carry these harsh side effects with it then higher doses could be given to the concentrated organs without hurting the patient.
Consultant interventional radiologist Dr. Brian Stedman has already used the PHP treatment on two patients separating the liver from the rest of the body and saturating it in chemotherapy drugs. After the drugs were applied to the organ the blood was diverted past the organ and run through a filtration machine to reduce its toxicity before the patient was affected.
This type of treatment could be a breakthrough for treating many different types of cancer such as pancreatic and hepatobiliary cancer. However, using the same principle melanoma, colon, and breast cancer could also be treated in this manner. The technique is already in use in the US, Italy, France, Germany, and Ireland.
