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Out-of-Body Treatment For Liver Cancer
Tangential writes "This is amazing. Liver cancer, dangerous to treat and often deadly. Dosing that part of your body with enough radiation to cure the cancer often does as much harm as good. If they could just remove your liver, send it down to the lab to be treated and put it back in. An Italian MD has done just that." There's a story at New Scientist as well.
No, Beavis, lower down.
Argh! My liver, my liver!
Joe
Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com
Now I can do that out of body drinking!
This technique may work fine for the liver and a few other organs that are less vital (digestive organs for example). The article said the man was without his liver for only 11 minutes.. Surely this is the time that it was completely out of his body, and the time it was "disconnected" was much longer. Other organs, like the lungs and especially the brain, can't be so readily removed.
The reason they took out the liver is not to give it a bigger dose, it's so that the other structures in the body like bones don't reflect the radiation beams. With nothing in the way, the whole thing gets evenly done all the way around.
And they are using the boron neutron capture technique thingy for this. I'm guessing that the boron atoms, which are absorbed more into the rapidly growing cancers, absorb the neutrons from the radiation stream going by.
So what does it do then? Does the boron heat up when it absorbs a neutron, cooking the tumor but not the liver? Anyone who knows, clue me in.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Just one question, what happens if they drop it?
My father died of a cancer that sounds similar to what this guy had. Small tumors that spread over everything. Starts in the lung or liver, usually, and then spreads throughout all organs, eventually into the lymph system. Once in the lymph system, you are done.
The beauty of this treatment is, it seems like such a simple idea. Why not take out the effected organ, if you can safely?
What a difference six and a half years make...
You know, the World Weekly News has been writing about brain transplants ("Elvis alive but in different body!") for years.
So all we have to do is get those reputable scientists to talk to the guy in Italy and we'd have a cure for brain cancer!
You can read up on brain transplants here.
...I hope they introduce a good system for tracking whose liver is whose. I'd hate to get your liver put in me by mistake.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I have a great new operation the court could order convicted spammers to face. We could remove the brain from the body, subject it to a high dose of radiation, surgically insert a bullet into the amygdala, and then replace the brain back into the head. Scientists predict average IQ scores of spammers to increase by 100% with this technique, up to a total of 4 IQ points! Slightly smarter than a peanut.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Removing the brain is easy. Just remove put it in a containment jar.
They were able to do it in Star Trek.
Of course McCoy used that Matrix like machine to tell him how to put it back and almost killed himself in the process, oh well.
Veramocor
...they take out your liver, and irradiate YOU!
Sounds like something from a Monty Python script
If there are anything in radiotherapy that slashdot people should know it is IMRT. It is implemented by clever inverse calculation algorithms and quite fancy control equipment, and even better, is proven, provides better 5 year life quality, less complications, improved local control, etc.
-- Imperial units must die --
How do I know that I'll get my own liver back?
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"