IMAGE-GUIDED
CRYOABLATION
RENAL TUMOR
Image-Guided
Ablation to Treat Kidney Cancer
Combining Galil Medical’s patented
freezing technology and ultra-thin
cryoablation needles with advanced imaging
capabilities has created the opportunity for interventional
radiologists to perform truly minimally invasive
cryoablation for the treatment
of kidney cancer. Currently, Galil
Medical’s cryoablation system is used by interventional
radiologists to perform percutaneous image-guided
cryoablation on certain kidney tumors and on cancer
that has metastasized to the liver. Interventional
radiology treatments offer less risk, less pain
and less recovery time compared to open surgery.
Interventional radiologists are considered minimally invasive treatment specialists. They have pioneered non-surgical treatments of many serious medical conditions, beginning over 40 years ago with the advent of angioplasty to treat blocked coronary arteries. Since that time, interventional radiologists have developed a wealth of minimally invasive procedures, both catheter based and percutaneous, that have expanded the population of patients eligible for treatment, and many conditions that once required surgery can be treated non-surgically by interventional radiologists.
One of the more recent treatment developments is the non-surgical ablation of solid tumors to destroy cancer without harming healthy surrounding tissue. Kidney cancer is the eighth most common cancer in men and the tenth in women. The most common type of kidney cancer is called renal cell carcinoma, or RCC, which makes up almost 90% of kidney tumors.
Although surgical removal of the kidney (radical nephrectomy) remains the best hope for cure for most patients with kidney cancer, many individuals are not candidates for surgery. For some of these patients, minimally invasive, image-guided treatments provide therapeutic alternatives to radical nephrectomy. These treatments also offer valuable benefits to those patients with advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Chemotherapy drugs and radiation have shown limited effectiveness in curing kidney cancer.
Image guidance refers to the use
of imaging techniques (e.g., fluoroscopy, ultrasound,
CT and MRI) during a procedure. A variety
of image-guided percutaneous thermal ablation
techniques are now available to interventional
radiologists, but devices to apply only two of
these techniques have been cleared by the FDA
for use in treating tumors in the kidney.
Therefore, cryoablation
(also known as cryotherapy)
and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) are the most
commonly used thermal ablation treatments for
kidney cancer. Other image-guided thermal
ablation technologies include microwave ablation,
and high frequency ultrasound (HIFU) ablation.
The use of these technologies is considered experimental
for kidney cancer.
In radiofrequency ablation, the interventional radiologist guides a small needle through the skin into the tumor. From the tip of the needle, radiofrequency energy is transmitted into the tumor, where it produces heat that kills the tumor cells. The dead tumor tissue shrinks and slowly turns into a scar.
Cryoablation is similar to RFA in that
the energy is delivered directly into the tumor
by a probe that is inserted through the skin.
But rather than killing the tumor with heat, cryoablation
uses an extremely cold gas to freeze it. This
technique has been used for many years by urologists
in the operating room, but a few years ago Galil
Medical developed cryoablation
needles that are small enough to be inserted
by interventional radiologists directly through
the skin without the need for a surgical incision.
The "iceball" that is created around
the needle grows in size and destroys the tumor
cells by freezing them. The natural analgesic
effect of cold therapy may be why patients undergoing
cryoablation report less pain than those undergoing
RFA.
If you would like more information
on image-guided cryoablation for the treatment
of kidney cancer, see the section Image-Guided
Cryoablation of Renal Tumors. To
learn more about image-guided cryoablation, see
the section Image-Guided
Cryoablation Overview. If you are
interested in finding out more about kidney cancer
and its treatment, please click on the Kidney
Cryotherapy icon at the top of the page.
|
