A tad of a marketing deal for the Medical Centre....

A tad of a marketing deal for the Medical Centre.

http://www.gjsentinel.com/lifestyle...ntional-radiologist-brings-advanced-treatment

A few of take aways;

“This is not a cure for cancer, but it keeps liver tumors from growing and significantly prolongs a patient’s life,” said Scriver, who had been performing the procedure in Vermont before he began practicing at St. Mary’s.

“I think we will end up treating more patients up front” he said.

Also goes into some initial detail about the complexity and time it takes for a centre to be ready for SIRT

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Sponsored Content: Nancy Lofholm For St. Mary’s Medical Center
Dr. Geoffrey Scriver does not have any magic bullet to cure patients with cancer that has invaded their livers. But he does have thousands of minuscule radioactive spheres he can aim directly at liver tumors to extend lives.
Scriver, an interventional radiologist, has brought this advanced cancer treatment to St. Mary’s with the help of a large coalition of health experts from multiple departments at the hospital. Oncologists, radiologists, interventional radiology technologists and nurses, medical physicists and nuclear medical technologists all came together to make it possible for Scriver to perform the procedure known as Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT) or SIR-Spheres Y-90 Radioembolization.
That complicated name, and the size of the medical team involved, belie a procedure that is relatively simple for patients.
The tumor-shrinking, outpatient treatment is done under light sedation – the same used for colonoscopies. It is performed using an arterial catheter inserted through a puncture in the femoral artery – like in an angiogram. Recovery time is quick, and because radiation is delivered only to tumors, the treatment has few side effects. Short-term fatigue and nausea are the most common side effects.
“This is not a cure for cancer, but it keeps liver tumors from growing and significantly prolongs a patient’s life,” said Scriver, who had been performing the procedure in Vermont before he began practicing at St. Mary’s.
St. Mary’s is now the only medical facility between Denver and Salt Lake City to offer the SIRT treatment. That means patients can avoid a multiple-trip inconvenience; the treatment usually involves three or four separate appointments spread over weeks.
Patients are first assessed to determine if their livers are healthy enough to tolerate the treatment. The procedure is only done on tumors that can’t be surgically removed, and on those patients who don’t have extensive cancer throughout their bodies.
Scriver begins the actual treatment by exploring and mapping the arterial system of the liver. Accessing the liver through the femoral artery, he injects x-ray dye so he can find which arteries go to the liver and which go to organs outside the liver such as the stomach or intestines. He inserts tiny plugs into some arteries so no radioactivity can travel beyond the liver and damage other organs.
In a second procedure, he concentrates his treatment on the arteries of the liver that wrap around the tumors like the limbs of vines. Scriver injects thousands of hair-thin spheres into these arteries.
Scriver usually treats half of the liver at a time, so the procedure is repeated a month or so later to treat the entire liver. Four to six hours after the procedure, patients can go home.
“This is such a wonderful opportunity to treat this type of cancer,” said Janet Tuttle, imaging manager for nursing in interventional radiology.
Tuttle was part of the large and diverse team that met for months to open the door for the SIRT treatment at St. Mary’s.
Any time radioactivity is involved, that complicates matters. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must okay the handling and use of the radioactive material, in this case Yttrium-90. This radioactive material is carried by the tiny spheres to the cancerous tumors.
Internally, an unusually large number of departments had to be involved in setting up the protocol for using the Yttrium-90. A number of departments continue to be involved in the actual radioembolization procedure.
St. Mary’s oncologists initially determine which patients might benefit and refer them to Scriver. They coordinate other treatments such as chemotherapy which might be used concurrently with the SIRT procedure.
Besides Scriver, the actual procedure brings together interventional radiology nurses who sedate and prepare the patient, medical physicists Erica Kinsey and Dave Thompson who assure safe handling of the radioactive material for both the patient and the caregivers, and interventional radiology and nuclear medicine technologists, who assist Scriver.
It was a technologist in Scriver’s department who actually led the effort that resulted in the procedure being offered at St. Mary’s. Lead interventional radiology technologist Tayra Shanley, who now also has the title SIRT coordinator, brought administrators and department heads together for the months of work required to begin the SIRT treatment.
Scriver hopes that the SIRT treatment will eventually be used earlier in a patient’s treatment plan to shrink liver tumors. The liver is where tumors often metastasize from colon and other cancers, and it is one of the more aggressive and deadly cancers.
Scriver said studies are indicating that the earlier patients are treated with the radioactive spheres the better the result. He expects the completion of the studies to open more opportunity for the treatment to be added along with chemotherapy when liver cancer is initially diagnosed.
“I think we will end up treating more patients up front” he said.