Medical isotope developer IsoRay Medical has reported that a cesium-131 brachytherapy sutured mesh implant in a patient with a recurring meningioma tumor has kept the patient tumor-free for 90 days.
The procedure was performed by surgeon Dr. Kris Alan Smith, medical director of the Gamma Knife Center at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. According to IsoRay, this procedure was the first of its kind to be performed.
The patient had experienced a fourth recurrence of a meningioma, a common brain tumor that develops in membranous layers surrounding the central nervous system. The cesium-131 brachytherapy sutured mesh was placed over the resected tumor at the time of surgery to provide direct radiation therapy to the entire tumor bed and margins.
Unlike with prior external-beam radiotherapy, where the tumor had recurred as early as six weeks later, the patient has been tumor-free for 90 days.
