Prevention and treatment of liver cancer is urgent. Traditional liver cancer treatment is surgery, combined with radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Such traditional treatment methods have great limitations. With the advancement of medical technology, some more advanced methods for treating tumors are increasingly used in clinical experiments, such as yttrium 90 treatment, which is such a radiotherapy method.
What is yttrium 90 microsphere?
It is a new method developed by Australia in 1998. It was approved by the US FDA for liver metastasis of colorectal cancer in 2002 and approved by the EU in 2003 for liver cancer patients who cannot be surgically removed. Taiwan was also approved for use in 2011.
Yttrium 90 microspheres are tiny spheres with radioactive material that can emit beta rays, but not primary gamma rays. It can be carried in glass microspheres or lipids, its radiation range is only 1.1 cm, the half-life time is short (about 64 hours), and radioactive yttrium 90 is delivered to the blood vessel supplying tumor nutrients through the catheter, and it will stop with the blood flow The tiny arteries that reside in the tumor have a fairly good tumor coverage. Next, local radiotherapy will be performed for about two weeks (β-rays decay with time, emit 94% of the radiation energy within 11 days, and less than 2.5% of the emission energy after 14 days), with close-range, high radiation dose of β- Rays kill liver tumors.
In general, external radiation therapy takes into account the damage that can be sustained by surrounding normal tissues, so the energy can only reach 30 gray, and the energy of transhepatic artery radioembolization can be as high as 150 gray. At the same time, the use of angiography technology to increase the positioning accuracy can not only increase local The tumor lethality can also reduce the side effects of treatment, and the toxic injury is less serious than chemotherapy, which can achieve a more effective treatment effect.
An important auxiliary link in the treatment of liver cancer
After receiving yttrium 90 therapy, some of the liver cancer patients who were not suitable for surgery at the beginning narrowed the tumor to the scope of surgery, and finally removed the tumor by surgery. Therefore, yttrium 90 in vivo radiotherapy can not only be used as the main link of liver cancer, but also an important auxiliary link.
Although yttrium 90 therapy has various advantages, it still needs to be noted that some patients are not suitable for yttrium 90 in vivo radiotherapy, such as patients with cholangiocarcinoma, patients with colorectal liver cancer metastases who are not treatable by surgery and chemotherapy is not effective Breast cancer patients with liver metastases that have failed to be treated with a variety of chemotherapy drugs.
The above simply understands some simple knowledge of yttrium 90 in the treatment of liver cancer. This is a brand new technology for the treatment of liver cancer. This treatment method can become an important auxiliary link in the treatment of liver cancer. Of course, not all patients are suitable for yttrium 90 therapy. For liver cancer patients, symptomatic treatment is the most important in the treatment process, and for ordinary people, it is necessary to strengthen the prevention of liver cancer.
