Combo treatment allows surgery for liver cancer

By Anthony J. Brown, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Direct injection of drugs into the arteries feeding the liver coupled with standard chemotherapy can make inoperable liver cancers suitable for surgery in about half of patients, new research shows.

The findings, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, are based on a study of 49 patients, 23 of whom had never been treated with chemotherapy before.

Lead author Dr. Nancy E. Kemeny, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, told Reuters Health that while the study is not the first to examine treatments to increase operation rates, it is different from many of its predecessors in that the subjects truly had severe disease that could not be removed.

In the study, 47 percent of patients were able to undergo surgery after receiving combination therapy. Among the subjects who had never received chemotherapy before, the rate was even higher -- 57 percent.

Following treatment, patients with and without prior chemotherapy exposure typically survived 35 and 51 months, respectively. Women were more likely than men to become surgical patients following treatment.

Kemeny said that future research should examine whether chemotherapy alone without injection of drugs into the liver arteries could achieve the same results seen in the present study.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Oncology, May 2009.