Freezing the Spread of Breast Cancer, Literally

In the United States, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every three minutes and one woman will die from the disease every 13 minutes. We are all aware of the most common treatments for breast cancer such as chemotherapy, radiation, and hormone therapy. However, researchers have recently found success with a new technique that is likely to to become more maintstream in the near future. What if we could freeze cancer? What if we could prevent cancerous cells from spreading to surrounding tissue? Well, there is cryotherapy. Cryotherapy is a therapy in which a cancer-killing freeze is achieved by delivering a very low temperature gas to the tumor using needle-like probes.

A study was conducted using 13 patients with breast cancer with tumor sizes ranging from 0.5 cm to 5.8 cm, the average tumor being 1.7 cm. "Using local anesthesia with mild sedation, an average of three probes per tumor were guided to the tumor site using either ultrasound alone or ultrasound with computed tomography (CT) imaging. The probes produced "ice balls" ranging in size from 2 centimeters to 10 centimeters, depending on the size of the targeted tumor."

As a result, patients reported minimal pain and were very happy about the cosmetic results. "All 13 of the women who had the procedure were alive with no clinical evidence of cancer recurrence an average of 18 months, and up to five years, after having the procedure." However, cure rates are still unknown, and much larger studies need to be conducted before cryotherapy is considered and administered as an effective treatment.

Read more at WebMD: http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20100316/breast-cancer-treated-by-freezing-tumors