Irreversible electroporation, a new interventional radiology procedure, is being used to treat patients with inoperable locally advanced pancreatic cancer, attendees at the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) annual meeting learned this week.
The treatment, which uses microsecond electrical pulses to force open and destroy tumor cells around blood vessels of the pancreas, was used to treat eight patients at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine between December 2010 and September 2011. The patients received the interventional radiology treatment a median of nine months after being diagnosed. They also underwent two other methods of treatment to kill their cancerous tumors, which ranged from 2.5 to 6.8 cm in size.
Dr. Govindarajan Narayanan, chief of vascular and interventional radiology and associate professor of clinical radiology at the university, said that two of the patients were able to have surgery after the treatment; they had successful resections and remain cancer-free.
Irreversible electroporation is performed with a NanoKnife system (AngioDynamics), which is in the premarket notification stage with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
