What are the characteristics of interventional therapy?

Many techniques of interventional therapy are derived from surgical operations. It is a therapy adopted and improved by radiologists. Interventional radiology causes relatively little damage to the body, has very accurate positioning, relatively few side effects, and rarely causes complications. It is clinically called minimally invasive treatment.

① Little damage, safe and easy;

② Accurate positioning, rapid and certain therapeutic effect;

③Few side effects and complications. What is commonly known as minimally invasive treatment in clinical practice is actually interventional treatment.

How to use

The method is: usually at the base of the thigh, puncture the skin, insert a special catheter into the femoral artery, then into the abdominal aorta, and finally into the hepatic artery, and as far as possible into the arterial branch that supplies blood to the liver cancer tissue. Then an embolic agent and chemotherapy drugs are injected into the hepatic artery. There are two types of embolic agents: peripheral embolic agents, commonly using iodized oil, which completely blocks the small arteries; and proximal embolic agents, commonly using gelatin sponges, stainless steel rolls, etc., with gelatin sponges being the most commonly used, which can block the hepatic artery trunk. Chemotherapy drugs such as fluorouracil, mitomycin, cisplatin, doxorubicin or epidoxorubicin can be infused at the same time. These drugs should be fully mixed with iodized oil in advance and injected into the hepatic artery to be slowly released, which can exert a more lasting anti-cancer effect.

Use value

Its main value lies in:

(1) To reduce the size of the tumor, making liver cancer that was previously inoperable resectable resectable, or to create conditions for other treatments such as argon-helium cryosurgery;

(2) This method helps prevent recurrence after liver cancer resection or cryosurgery. A study was conducted on 139 patients with liver cancer who underwent radical resection. The 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates of those who underwent postoperative chemical embolization were 89.1%, 61.2%, and 53.7%, respectively. However, the intrahepatic recurrence rate of those who did not undergo chemical embolization was as high as 56.3%, and the 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates were 75.4%, 42.4%, and 30.5%, respectively.

Causes of non-healing

But in most cases, this method cannot cure liver cancer because:

(1) The blood supply to the periphery of the tumor often comes from the portal vein;

(2) After hepatic artery embolization, the portal vein's blood supply to the tumor increases compensatorily, or collateral circulation occurs;

(3) This method is not easy to block the small arteries supplying the sub-nodules around large tumors.