Study shows potential to freeze breast cancer

TAMPA, Fla. — Interventional radiologists have opened the door to a potential future treatment for breast cancer: image-guided, multiprobe cryotherapy.

In the first reported study, researchers were able to successfully freeze breast cancer in patients who refused surgery. The women did not have to undergo surgery after treatment to ensure that tumors had been killed, note researchers at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s 35th annual scientific meeting.

“Minimally invasive cryotherapy opens the door for a potential new treatment for breast cancer and needs to be further tested. When used for local control and/or potential cure of breast cancer, it provided safe and effective breast conservation with minimal discomfort for a group of women who refused invasive surgery or had a local recurrence and needed additional management,” said Dr. Peter J. Littrup, an interventional radiologist and director of imaging research and image-guided therapy for the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.

“This is the first reported study of successfully freezing breast cancer without having to undergo surgery afterward to prove that it was completely treated,” he said.

In the 13-patient study, no localized treatment recurrences were seen for up to five years, no significant complications were noted and women were pleased with the cosmetic outcomes, said Littrup, who is also a professor of radiology, urology and radiation oncology at Wayne State University in Detroit. Cryotherapy was applied according to well-established freezing principles, and biopsies at the margins of the cryotherapy site immediately after the procedure and at the cryotherapy site in follow-up were all negative — showing no cancer, Littrup said.

In the study’s cryotherapy treatment, researchers used several needlelike cryoprobes that were evenly spaced and that were inserted through the skin to deliver extremely cold gas directly to the tumor to freeze it. This technique has been used for many years by surgeons in the operating room; however, in the last few years, the needles have become small enough to be used by interventional radiologists through a small nick in the skin, without the need for an operation.

The “ice ball” that is created around the needle grows in size and destroys the frozen tumor cells. The major benefits of cryotherapy are its superb visualization of the ice treatment zone during the procedure, its low pain profile in an outpatient setting and its excellent healing with minimal scar, said Littrup. Breast imaging has markedly advanced by accurate improvements in breast magnetic resonance imaging, allowing for excellent treatment planning of tumor size and extent within the breast, as well as showing zones of destruction thoroughly covering the tumor after cryotherapy, he said.

More information about the Society of Interventional Radiology, interventional radiologists and minimally invasive treatments for cancer can be found online at SIRweb.org.