Dramatic response to SIRT

Worth a read, and at the RNS. Just up the road from SRX.
Dramatic response to selective internal radiation therapy for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma

1. Woo Daniel Park1,
2. Bob T. Li2,3,
3. Richard Maher4,
4. Jaswinder S. Samra3,5,6,
5. Stephen Clarke1,3,
6. Elizabeth J. Bernard3,7,
7. Dale L. Bailey7,8 and
8. Nick Pavlakis1,3,*

+ Author Affiliations

1. mce-anchor
   1Department of Medical Oncology, Royal North Shore Hospital, St Leonards, Sydney, NSW, Australia
2. mce-anchor
   2Department of Medicine, Division of Solid Tumor Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA
3. mce-anchor
   3Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
4. mce-anchor
   4Department of Radiology, Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, NSW, Australia
5. mce-anchor
   5Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Royal North Shore Hospital, St Leonards, Sydney, NSW, Australia
6. mce-anchor
   6Australian School of Advanced Medicine, Macquarie University, North Ryde, Sydney, NSW, Australia
7. mce-anchor
   7Department of Nuclear Medicine, Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, NSW, Australia
8. mce-anchor
   8Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

1. ↵*Correspondence address. Department of Medical Oncology, Royal North Shore Hospital, St Leonards, Sydney, NSW 2065, Australia. Tel: +61-2-9463-1172; Fax: +61-2-9463-1092; E-mail: [email protected]

• Received December 30, 2014.
• Revision received January 20, 2015.
• Accepted January 25, 2015.

Abstract

A 54-year-old woman with a known history of multifocal hepatocellular carcinoma was treated with selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) using yttrium-90 (90Y) microspheres, despite disease relapses after surgical resection and transarterial chemoembolization. She developed a dramatic clinical, radiological and metabolic response after 9 weeks. This case provides visual illustration of the potential roles of SIRT in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma.

CASE REPORT

A 54-year-old woman with a known history of multifocal hepatocellular carcinoma was treated with initial right partial hepatectomy and subsequently transhepatic arterial chemoembolization (TACE) for recurrent unresectable disease 12 months after surgery. Five months post TACE, she developed worsening abdominal discomfort, and fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography with computed tomography (FDG-PET/CT) scan showed evidence of progressive disease with increased FDG uptake in lesions involving segments 2, 3, 7 and 8 (Fig. 1a). She was treated with selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) using yttrium-90 (90Y) microspheres (SIR-Spheres®), which were infused into left, middle and right hepatic arteries (Fig. 1a). At 9-week follow-up, her abdominal discomfort had resolved and FDG-PET/CT scan demonstrated a near complete metabolic response (Fig. 1b). Subsequent angiography revealed parasitized arterial supply to the segment 7 tumour from the inferior phrenic artery, which would explain the inadequate perfusion and dose delivery of 90Y microspheres (Fig. 1a, cross-hairs) with only a partial response of the single lesion (Fig. 1b, cross-hairs).

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Figure 1:
(a) FDG-PET/CT with axial views showing recurrent multifocal hepatocellular carcinoma and perfusion of injected 90Y-tagged resin microspheres. (b) Follow-up FDG-PET/CT at 9 weeks after injection of 90Y microspheres showing a radiological response with tumour necrosis and a near complete metabolic response.


DISCUSSION

Hepatocellular carcinoma is the second leading cause of cancer death worldwide, resulting in between half to one million deaths globally per year [1]. Despite therapeutic advances, most patients are not amenable to curative treatments such as surgical resection or liver transplantation, and median survival is ∼11 months in patients with advanced disease [2]. SIRT using 90Y-tagged resin microspheres emit high-energy beta radiation towards locoregional tumours [3, 4]. Observational studies from Europe and the USA have demonstrated the safety and efficacy of SIRT for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma [3, 4]. However, due to the lack of randomized controlled trial data, SIRT has not been incorporated into international guidelines such as the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer treatment strategy as a standard of care [2]. FDG-PET was shown to be a superior imaging modality for response assessment after SIRT [5]. The dramatic clinical and FDG-PET/CT response seen in this case illustrates the potential roles for SIRT in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, both in symptom palliation and surgical downstaging. Well-designed and conducted clinical trials could inform new treatment strategies and provide hope for patients suffering from this deadly disease of global epidemic proportions.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

None declared.

• © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact [email protected]