Interventional therapy is a kind of minimally invasive therapy performed under the guide of medical imaging equipments. It is mainly divided into two broad categories: vascular interventional therapy and non vascular interventional therapy. The physician will introduce instruments such as needles or catheters (long, thin tubes) into the body through tiny(1-2 mm) incisions in the skin. The instruments are then guided by an imaging technique called fluoroscopy to the tumor. In this way, the physician can deliver cancer medicine directly to the tumor. No surgery, small trauma, quick recovery and good effect are the main characteristics of Interventional Therapy, which enables it to widely apply in diagnosing and treating tumors.
For the early-stage cancer patients, the survival rate of patients who have 5 years after radical resection is up to 60%-90%. However, due to the limitation of current technologies, over 70% of patients who are diagnosed with cancer are in middle or late stage. At this time, the cancer cells grow rapidly, and have metastasis to other parts of human body, which endangers the patients’ life. Minimally Invasive Interventional Therapy is able to cut off the nutrition supply of cancer cells and prevent the spread of cancer cells. As a patient is diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer, he/she already misses the best time for tumor resection. The minimally invasive interventional therapy can shrink the tumors to create favorable conditions for the surgery.
Traditional chemotherapy and radiation therapy also bring harm to the healthy cells while killing tumor cells, which will lower the immunity of human body and bring huge side effect. In the middle and advanced stage, cancer patients will be so week and have failure in their organs, thus they can not adapt to traditional chemo- and radio-therapy. The minimally invasive interventional therapy has little damage to human body and the medicine can be delivered to the tumor directly, which reduces the side effect.
Metastasis is a marked feature of cancer distinguished from other diseases, as well as the real cause of most cancer patients’ death. The minimally invasive interventional therapy can effectively reduce the metastasis of cancer cells.
Interventional Therapy PK Traditional Chemotherapy
| Damage | Tiny incisions(1-2mm), with small side effect, minimize the damage of surgery |
| Course of Treatment | short course, quick recovery |
| Advantages and Disadvantages | Advantages: Cut off blood supply of cancer tissues, highly targeted to kill cancer cells; huge drug concentration, much less side effect to fast and accurately kill cancer cells; real-time effect evaluation and significant effect. |
| Damage | Series of side effect such as leukocyte and thrombocyte reducing, immune function decreasing and infections, as well as having hair loss or vomiting |
| Course of Treatment | Usually 4-8 courses, one month for each course, very long treatment course |
| Advantages and Disadvantages | Advantages: Remove tumor quickly. Best therapy for early tumor.Disadvantages: huge side effect, kill cancer cells as well as killing normal cells, easy to destroy the immune function of human body. Can’t effectively control the late-stage tumors. |
Precisely position, directly cut off the blood supply of tumor cells, starve the tumor cells to death, with less damage on normal tissues.
Very tiny trauma to reduce the pain of cancer patients.
Without limitation of the metabolic cycle of tumor cells, it can be done over and over again by staging to deal with the multiple and recurrent tumor nodules.
Under the monitoring of modern imaging equipment(DSA), we can precisely evaluate the objective effect of interventional therapy timely and effectively.
Small dose and high concentration of drugs lead to small side effect and no drug resistance.
Interventional therapy only needs local anesthesia, no need of general anesthesia, which has no system interference and anesthesia risks.
Generally patients can have normal activities 12 hours after operation and discharge from hospital after 4-5 days.
Patients who have had interventional therapy will have extension of life and the quality of their life will be improved significantly.
Survivor Stories
In order to ensure the chemotherapeutic medicine and embolism agent be injected into tumors lesions, doctors of minimally-invasive interventional therapy should have the following three skills:
None of these three points can be excluded in interventional therapy. Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou possesses all above points to ensure the success of interventional therapy.
Recommended Doctors
Follow Us:
Overseas Offices:
Partner Organizations:
Copyright © 2012 Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou, China All Rights Reserved.
