New milestone for liver cancer patients

YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA) - Onvida Health has announced its team has successfully performed its first Y-90 treatment procedure targeting liver tumors.

For patients unable to undergo surgery, doctors say the treatment can be life-changing.

“As long as they follow up and everything looks good, then they can actually be transplanted, so it’s a very powerful thing,” said Dr. Kamalani Hanamaika’i.

Dr. Hanamaika’i explained that some liver cancer patients may not initially qualify for a transplant because their tumors fall outside accepted transplant criteria. However, Y-90 treatment can sometimes shrink or destroy tumors enough to make transplantation possible.

The procedure Y-90 uses a radioactive isotope attached to tiny beads. Doctors deliver the beads directly into the blood vessels feeding the tumor.

“An isotope that emits radiation, and we place it on beads, and we take those beads and place them into a cancer,” Hanamaika’i said. “It basically causes damage to the cancer and the tissues that it is infused with and then that can many times kill the tumor.”

Doctors say the process is highly regulated and carefully planned from diagnosis through treatment delivery to ensure the radiation remains focused only on the intended area of the liver.

“Everything from the inception of diagnosing the cancer, planning the cancer, making sure that if we gave the radiation to the liver that it stays,” Hanamaika’i said. “And then also with delivery making sure that when we deliver we did a good job keeping it in the liver just to the area we wanted to treat.”

The treatment can help shrink or control cancer and, in some cases, create opportunities for future surgery or even a liver transplant.

Because the radioactive beads travel only a short distance inside the body, physicians say the therapy is both precise and effective while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.

Patients who may benefit from Y-90 are typically referred through the Onvida Health Cancer Center after a liver tumor is identified and surgery is no longer considered an option.

“It takes a lot, it’s not like any other therapy,” Hanamaika’i said. “This is a very unique therapy that, if applied very well, has miraculous results.”

Doctors say Y-90 treatment is usually completed in a single day, allowing most patients to return home afterward while experiencing fewer side effects and a quicker recovery compared to more invasive procedures.