Radio Frequency Ablation Please Share Experiences

Hello Everyone,

My mother is a Stage IV Colon Cancer patient with mets to the liver and the lungs. She basically has two tumors both just under 2 cm on the liver on opposite ends. She has smaller tumors on her lungs. I believe 4 on the left lung and 1 on the right. Since her two last cat scans showed the tumors on the lungs to be stable and the two tumors on the liver growing very slightly, we are considering RFA for the two tumors on the liver. We had a consultation today and although the radiologist is willing to pursue this procedure despite the other activity on the lungs,he stressed that he is not sure if the procedure  will elongate her life. He told us there are risks involved, such as the possibility of infection, might end up deflating the lung by the tumor in the process and have to re-inflate it, etc.. The one tumor is close to the heart which makes it a little tricky also. I realize it is his job to tell us all the risks but the fact that he was willing to pursue this makes me feel that there must be some promise in it. I have read a little on line about the procedure and it sounds like a good weapon against these stubborn tumors especially since you can remain on your chemotherapy . If we can do something in addition to the chemo I feel that would be promising. My mother has been on chemo since Jan 07 and she has gone from Oxaliplatin to Irinotecan and I understand Erbitux will be next. I just am concerned that if we do nothing but chemo we will eventually run out of chemo options. If anyone has had this procedure and can share some info with me I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks very much,

Harley4

If it was me, I would definitely go for it. I have researched RFA a lot and I deeply regret not insisting that my mother (also mets to liver and lung and just started erbitux/irinotecan) did not have it prior to starting chemotherapy.  From what I have read, combining RFA/chemo has a better outcome than either therapy alone. yes there are side effects but death rates are .4 per cent or roughly one in two hundred with the procedure.  Meantime my mum's cancer has progressed so now it is no longer an option.
As you say, your mum is running out of options. 

I wish you both well and I would love to hear how your mum gets on.

On 4/30/2008 daisychain wrote:

If it was me, I would definitely go for it. I have researched RFA a lot and I deeply regret not insisting that my mother (also mets to liver and lung and just started erbitux/irinotecan) did not have it prior to starting chemotherapy.  From what I have read, combining RFA/chemo has a better outcome than either therapy alone. yes there are side effects but death rates are .4 per cent or roughly one in two hundred with the procedure.  Meantime my mum's cancer has progressed so now it is no longer an option.
As you say, your mum is running out of options. 

I wish you both well and I would love to hear how your mum gets on.

Hi,

Thanks very much. I do agree with you. I was exhausted yesterday from thinking about what the right thing is to do and I know there really isn't a perfect answer. This morning we were back at chemo and we told our oncologist that we met with the doctor at Sloan's in Manhattan yesterday. Our oncologist agreed that if my mother was willing to give it a try he thought we should do it. He also felt that my mother is at the point where she needs a break from the chemo. You don't have to stop chemo to do this procedure but they do want you to stop Avastin for 30 days prior. He suggested that the next round of chemo we take the Avastin out and depending on when the procedure is scheduled we give her a round off. She's been battling low red and white counts for quite a while and he thinks a little break would benefit her body and not be too much of a threat to her regarding the lung activity. We have decided to go for the procedure and I will definitely stay in touch to let you know the results over time. Thanks so much for your quick response and good wishes. I wish you and your mom all the best as well.

Regards,

Harley 4

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Hi,

My husband had RFA on two small liver tumors with great success.

He opted out of chemo, and is doing well.  There are right now, no signs of cancer.

He was not prepared for the soreness that came with the RFA.  It took him 2-3 weeks to feel better.  The doctors acted like he would feel better in a few days, but it took longer than that.

Hope this helps,

Lynette

Good for you harley 4.     If your mum does well on the RFA, I might just ship my mum over to the US for the same procedure....my doc had said once it was outside of the liver they will not do it in Ireland.

As I said, please keep us updated as hopefully your story will provide inspiration for many others.  This is a state of the art technology and oncologists are a bit more conservative than surgeons at putting people forward for it.

On 5/1/2008 daisychain wrote:

Good for you harley 4.     If your mum does well on the RFA, I might just ship my mum over to the US for the same procedure....my doc had said once it was outside of the liver they will not do it in Ireland.

As I said, please keep us updated as hopefully your story will provide inspiration for many others.  This is a state of the art technology and oncologists are a bit more conservative than surgeons at putting people forward for it.

Hi,

Have you heard about or looked into Cyberknife for treating the liver tumors?  It seems to have success rates better than RFA and claims that it rivals or even bests surgery (liver resection).  I am looking into it myself, as it is not even as invasive as RFA.  It's an exact type of radiation.  Tiny gold beads (called feducias- not sure on that spelling) are first implanted into the tumor(s) (by needle, I believe).  Then, with up to 5 sessions (sometimes less) are required.  The liver is an organ that moves with breathing, which is why they don't do traditional radiation on it.  With cyberknife, the radiation beams are attracted only to where the gold beads are.  So, even if the patient moves during the procedure, the radiation beams go only to where the beads/tumors are, not onto nearby tissue.  These radiation beams are very concentrated and strong.  Claims to be able to completely wipe out tumors, benign or malignant.

If you're not aware if Cyberknife is done in your area, just google cyberknife.  If you happen to live in San Diego County or near to it, TriCity Cyberknife of Vista is a great place to start.

Best wishes! 

Dear Harley4,

My daughter had cancer of an unknown primary which ended up in her liver.....she had an rfa and our radiologist gave us the same information about risks, etc.  He ended up getting 85 percent of it and Amanda, my daughter, ended up staying in the hospital for three days instead of over night because of the pain she was in.  She was young and healthy and strong when diagnosed with her cancer...the RFA was considered a success, and her oncologist gave her a break from chemo after the procedure was done.....within two months it had spread to other parts of her body, bones, kidney.....I am sure if we had the chance to do it all over we would because it gave us hope at a time where we desperately needed it......she had so much pain because it was such a large area of her liver...If your mom is strong enough I wouldn't hesitate to have it done..in our darkest hour we need to cling to the fact that there is always hope...My biggest regret is that they gave her a break from the chemo, but the bottom line is it wouldn't have made a difference with Amanda...unknown primary is terminal, and we were lucky we had her for the year we did after her diagnosis.....I wish you and your family good luck and healing.....

RFA appears to be one of the better things to come out of mainstream medicine in a while, along with the experimental vaccines like they have at MD Anderson in Houston (that worked well for my cousin's stage 3 melanoma) that use a patient's own cancer cells and the shielded radiation that does less damage to the body than most.

However, when you get down to it mainstream medicine still attempts to manage symptoms with surgery, chemo, radiation and techniques like RFA to try to destroy the tumors and cancer masses without actually addressing the underlying causes - and it is my strong personal feeling that success in cancer is not extending life or five year survival, it is complete elimination of the cancer and never having it return without damaging the patient or shortening life in the process.

I encourage everyone here to realize that when a person runs out of chemo or other mainstream options that does not mean they have run out of options.  There are other options that have saved thousands of lives - and could save many more if they were more widely known and if they were looked at in the beginning.

For the sake of giving yourself knowledge, if nothing else, take a look at these two articles:

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/41541

http://www.naturalnews.com/022808.html

Yes - I am a natural healing advocate here.  Not snakeoil or scams, mind you, but nature herself.  And trust me, if you take the time to investigate you will find that nature is no quack!

Live long, live well, live happy!