Cryoablation Treatment Helps Diminish Pain of Bone Cancer; Mayo Clinic Researchers Report Improved Quality of Life for Patients.

(From AScribe)

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Pain from cancer that has spread to the bone can be effectively diminished with a new treatment that freezes the cancerous areas, Mayo Clinic researchers reported today at the 30th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology in New Orleans.

The treatment can provide a higher quality of life to patients whose activities are greatly limited because of the debilitating pain, says Matthew Callstrom, M.D., Ph.D., a radiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester and the chief author of the abstract. Approximately 100,000 people develop cancer that spreads to the bone (metastasis) in the United States each year. This cancer often causes severe pain that is unrelieved by narcotics and other standard pain treatments. The new minimally invasive technique, cryoablation, uses extreme cold to freeze the tumor.

"For the many patients who have metastatic disease, radiation therapy and other therapies may fail over time or do not work at all," says Dr. Callstrom. "You can reduce the pain for patients with narcotics, but that often means they're sleeping through much of the day and get through the day from narcotic dose to narcotic dose. This has a significant impact on their quality of life."

"I have a patient who wasn't part of this trial, but he was basically unable to do anything, because of his pain," says Dr. Callstrom. "We treated him with cryoablation three weeks ago. He's a farmer and he just jumped back into life and is farming."

Dr. Callstrom said the treatment doesn't cure the disease, but gives patients a higher quality of life. "In the time they have, they come back and join the family," he says.

Cryoablation has been used for many years in the operating room, but now with smaller, insulated probes interventional radiologists can provide the therapy through a small nick in the skin, without surgery or stitches. The physician uses computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound imaging to guide up to eight probes through the skin into ...