[January 19, 2013]

Interventional Treatment with Radioactive Beads Helps Colon Cancer Patients Live Longer: Presented at ISET 2013

Patients who received minimally invasive treatment with yttrium-90 (Y-90) radioactive beads to treat colorectal cancer that had spread to the liver lived almost a year longer compared to those who received the standard of care therapy, suggests data being presented at the 5^th annual Symposium on Clinical Interventional Oncology (CIO), in collaboration with the International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy (ISET).

Researchers also determined that the Y-90 treatment was more successful in patients who hadn't been treated with bevacizumab (standard of care biologic therapy) for at least three months prior to the minimally invasive radioembolization therapy.

"Patients with liver-dominant metastases from colorectal cancer should be offered radioembolization in addition to chemotherapy because it may offer a survival benefit compared with chemotherapy alone," said mitry Goldin, M.D., a radiology resident at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, Mich., and lead author of the study.

The treatment involves injecting Y-90 radioactive beads through a catheter into the arteries feeding the liver tumors. The beads lodge in the arteries and emit radiation to kill the tumors. The method allows high doses of radiation to be directed primarily to the tumors, rather than to healthy tissue.

In the study, 39 patients underwent Y-90 radioembolization, 30 of whom had also received treatment with bevacizumab. Radioembolization patients who received treatment with bevacizumab within the previous three months had a median survival of 30.5 months after diagnosis with metastatic colorectal cancer but those who had either not received bevacizumab or had been treated more than three months previously had a median survival of 37.9 months, although the difference was not statistically significant. Taking into account all the study subjects, survival averaged about 11 to 12 months longer than historical survival estimates among patients who receive standard of care treatment with modern chemotherapy and biologics alone.

Bevacizumab reduces arterial capacity. Patients who had received bevacizumab within three months of radioembolization were more likely to have therapy stopped early due to slow blood flow. This resulted in delivering less of the prescribed radiation to the tumors.

For more about CIO and ISET, visit www.ISET.org/oncology.

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