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Out-of-Body Treatment For Liver Cancer

Posted by timothy on from the just-like-pop-tops dept.

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.

4 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Misleading article by Merlin42 · · Score: 4, Informative
    FBFA (Read Both Friendly Articles ;) ... from the new scientist article ...

    The team has been working on the method since 1987 and has done extensive studies to work out the optimum dose. Two to four hours after the compound is given, a low-energy neutron beam is directed at the organ, splitting the boron into high-energy particles that mainly kill the cancer cells.
    --
    Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
  2. Re:Misleading article by Dannon · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thanks for the clarification... but now I've got this weird mental image of the doctor removing the patient's liver and sticking it in a microwave, one with the rotating plate to make sure it's 'evenly done all the way around'.

    Minutes later: Ding!

    --
    Good judgment comes from experience.
    Experience comes from bad judgment.
  3. Re:Fine for the liver, but.. by Single+GNU+Theory · · Score: 3, Funny
    Other organs, like the lungs and especially the brain, can't be so readily removed.

    Sure they can be. Reinstallation, however, is a bitch.

    Heart and lung transplants happen all the time. So not only can they take the lungs out of a person, they can put them back in a completely different person! In order to do the procedure on lungs, the doctors would first put the patient on a heart-lung machine ("We've secretly replaced his blood with Folger's Crystals. Let's see if he can tell the differece!"), which would give them a little, er, breathing room regarding time.

    The problem with doing brains is that it's still a problem to heal damage to central nervous system nerves.

    --
    Little Debian: America's #1 Snack Distro!
  4. this sounds interesting by BigBir3d · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...