Radiofrequency Ablation

[shannon2]

My Mom was recently diagnosed with StageIV NSCLC. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with radiofrequency ablation in combination with chemo?

Thanks,

Shannon

[aloha]

no, but i just saw some info on it and it sounds promising. my mom has stage IV lung cancer (since oct 2007). she has done chemo and radiation. if i see any mmore info (vice versa) lets keep in contact

and hang in there

[shannon2]

Thanks. My Mom starts first round of chemo tomorrow with taxol/carboplatin/avastin. I hope she tolerates it well.

[Patti B]

Shannon-

Welcometo the forum. Sorry you had to find us but I am glad you did. You will find much support and information here.

I had asked my onc about radiofrequency ablation at one point. He said that where I go (the Cleveland Clinic) they were only doing it for liver cancer. He didn't seem to have a lot of good to say about it, altho maybe thats because they don't use it for lung cancer there. I think there was just a discussion about it recently on www.onctalk.com. You might want to check it out.

Good luck to your mom and please keep posting here and let us know how she is doing!!

Hugs - Patti B.

[Adrian]

Hi Shannon,

First, I'm sorry for your mom's recent diagnosis, but given recent advances, you have reason to be hopeful.

here's the deal. RFA is a promising LOCAL treatment. It kills individual tumors by burning them up from the inside. There are lots of other effective ways to kill tumors locally. Traditional radiation, certain kinds of freezing treatments, and of course, the gold standard, surgery.

What's hard to wrap one's mind around when you're new to the cancer game is that at stage IV, local treatment no longer does the trick. At stage IV, there are cancer cells floating around the blood stream. So you can radiate an individual tumor in the lung, or even cut out the lung, and the cancer cells are still in the body and can eventually "land" and form new tumor sites.

Because of that, at Stage IV, the usual standard of care focuses on SYSTEMIC and whole body treatment which (hopefully) attack cancer cells throughout the body, whereever they may be. The most traditional systemic treat is any of a number of chemotherapies. There are some newer, slighlty more effective chemos out there which your onc will know all about.

There is also a new breed of targetted drugs which your onc will also know all about (targetted here means the though the treatment is sysytemic, the medicine, unlike chemo, attacks ONLY cancer cells and not noraml/healthy cells). One of these drugs, Avastin can be used in conjunction with chemo and then by itself (sometimes for more than a year). Tarceva is another that when it works, works better than ANYTHING out there.

In sum, once stage IV, local treatments (besides brain radiation) is reserved for when a partivcular tumor is causing pain or othr is threatening to do damage---otherwise, systemic treatments will be the only meaningful way to address the cancer.

best of luck. keep us posted.

[Adrian]

I should also add that you should definitely check out www.onctalk.com. I know Dr. West is not a big fan of RFA on lung tumors as---if memory serves-- there is evidence of lung bleeding related deaths resulting from the procedure (or soemthing else really bad, can't remember). For sure he thinks traditional radiation is the better supported treatment option when local treatment on lung tumor is required.

[phylsgirl]

You are correct about the use of RFA on lung tumors. Here are links on onctalk bbs to a FDA page http://onctalk.com/?p=359 and http://onctalk.com/?p=949

which talks about what treatments RFA was approved for and the reports of fatalities using RFA in the treatment of lung cancer. What I got from the fda recommendation was rfa for the treatment of lung tumours should be done in a clinical setting.

Hope these links help...

[cat127]

Sorry, but the pharmacologist in me has to respond to this

There is also a new breed of targetted drugs which your onc will also know all about (targetted here means the though the treatment is sysytemic, the medicine, unlike chemo, attacks ONLY cancer cells and not noraml/healthy cells). One of these drugs, Avastin can be used in conjunction with chemo and then by itself (sometimes for more than a year). Tarceva is another that when it works, works better than ANYTHING out there.

This is not true. The so-called targeted therapies most certainly do also "attack" normal/healthy cells. It is why you get the side effects such as rash, diarrhea and in rare cases liver damage, from something like Tarceva. There is no drug out there that truly only affects cancer cells and not any other cell. It is the goal of every drug tested, but it doesn't exist yet. This is why I'm not a fan of the term "targeted therapy" vs "cytotoxic therapy". I know my sister would agree, as she is far sicker on Tarceva than she ever was on Carbo/Taxol.

[shannon2]

Thanks so much for everyone's reply!!!!