Breast Tumor May Be Treated By Freezing/Cryotherapy

There is fresh hope for breast cancer sufferers now as a new nonsurgical therapy for breast cancer is being explored. It is freezing of the tumor or cryotherapy that is being viewed as a possible alternative to surgery, and which could one day replace lumpectomy or mastectomy with a simple outpatient procedure.

It is being termed as a small but promising study in which researchers were successful in killing off cancerous cells of the breast by simply freezing them off. The technique used to get rid of the cancer is being called image-guided, multi probe cryotherapy. The procedure was performed on 13 women and no recurrence of the disease was seen in any of them as much as 5 years after the cryotherapy.

cryotherapyIn the study, the procedures were performed on a range of tumors; from large to very small so it holds out hope that the procedure could be effective for large size tumors as well.

The way that the procedure works is like this: needle like probes are used to deliver very low temperature gases to the tumor. Hitherto a single probe method of cryotherapy had been used, and was seen as being suitable only for tumors of 1.5 centimeters or less in size.

Source: Web MD