Living Longer With Liver Cancer
Reported June 27, 2005
OKLAHOMA CITY (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) — A cocktail using popyseed oil is being used to target cancer cells in the liver. That’s a first in the United States.
Nearly 19,000 cases of liver cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States.
“It is one of the more common tumors in the world … in the United States it’s a little less common,” says oncologist Howard Ozer, M.D., of University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City.
With traditional chemotherapy, only 13 percent of people survive. In his search for something better, Dr. Ozer uncovered a treatment pioneered in Hong Kong and Paris that has significantly better results. He says, “It’s been demonstrated that 60 percent to 70 percent of the patients that have been treated are alive at five years.”
The treatment uses a combination of popyseed oil and a radioactive isotope called i-131.
“You have to be able to deliver therapy directly into the liver,” Dr. Ozer says. “A catheter is inserted and threaded up and the radioactive isotope is infused. It’s localized there and as a result the radioactivity is released locally to the tumor. “
He says all the red tape was worth it to open doors for liver cancer patients. Clinical trials are expected to begin in the United States later this year. “It’s extremely exciting to be the first in the country to try something that’s that unique.” Unique and hopefully life-saving.
Dr. Ozer will be starting clinical trials by the end of the year.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Susie Bullock, R.N.
920 Stanton L. Young
Suite WP 2080
Oklahoma City, OK 73104
(405) 271-4022