Cutting-Edge chemo delivery for colorectal cancer

Treatment pumps chemo directly to tumor

DURHAM, North Carolina – Patients with colon cancer that spread to the liver had few options if standard chemotherapy stopped working.

Now, a treatment that pumps chemo directly to the tumor is doubling the survival rate and giving patients precious time.

Rita LaFlamme was stunned when she was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer last year.

Every year, nearly 140,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with colorectal cancer. In up to a quarter of those cases, the cancer has spread to the liver.

When standard chemotherapy stops working, many patients are left with few options.

Doctors at Duke University are now offering a treatment called hepatic artery infusion using a pump.

“The pump which is a battery-powered motorized pump is surgically implanted into a pocket in the abdominal wall,” said Dr. Michael Lidsky, a surgical oncologist at Duke University Medical Center.

The pump provides a direct dose of concentrated chemo to the liver.

“Those concentrations actually reach somewhere between three and 400 times the concentration that we would be able to get if we gave it intravenously,” Lidsky said.

So far, the results have been dramatic.

Lidsky said the treatment is used in combination with standard chemo and has been shown to double the survival rate.

“It’s pumping on the tumor and I’m not feeling a thing,” LaFlamme said.

LaFlamme said the treatment is working to shrink her tumor and she hopes to have surgery to remove it soon.

“I know I can beat this. I have no doubt in my mind that I will, I will beat it," she said.

Lidsky said hepatic artery infusion is not a cure but can be used pre-surgery or post-surgery to shrink tumors in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer to the liver.

Right now, the treatment is only being offered at a handful of centers around the country, including Duke and Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York.

The pump stays in the patient for years and can be used again if the disease recurs.

Patients need to be fit and have a liver-dominant disease only to be a good candidate.

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