According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare Cause of Death Statistics 2021, liver cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer in Taiwan. When liver cancer is diagnosed, some patients may already have complex tumours, or even metastasised to other parts of the body, and without effective treatment, patients can only live an average of three to six months.
Taichung Veterans General Hospital delivered a presentation on 10 Januaray with a focus on cancer treatment with Y-90 (Yttrium-90) glass microspheres. The hospital invited patients with liver cancer to share their experiences of going from only being able to receive systemic, conversvative immunotherapy to having their tumors successfully shrunk and removed after 8 months of treatment with the state-of-the-art Y-90 treatment administered by the integrative medicine team.
The microspheres are then injected into the liver through a catheter from the patient's groin artery. The microspheres are retained in the blood vessels that supply nutrients to the liver tumour and are irradiated for about two weeks to kill the liver tumour through close proximity and high radiation dose. As a result, the radiotherapy has contributed to the 'down-staging' of liver cancer and improved the survival rate of liver cancer patients, explained Dr Pi-Yi Chang, Director of Abdominal Radiology.
That raidotherapy consists of two stages. The first stage is a pre-operative assessment, in which a nuclear medicine examination is performed to simulate embolisation to assess the likely distribution dynamics of Y-90 and the extent and intensity of radiation exposure. The second stage, which is the therapy, will be carried out by a radiologist who injects Y-90 glass microspheres through a catheter.
Some liver cancer patients have multiple or large tumours that are not suitable for surgery or electrocautery, or even tumours that have metastasised to other sites and are not as well treated with targeted drugs.
The Y-90 radiotherapy is combined with systemic dual immunotherapy under an integrated interdisciplinary approach, a patient whose liver resection was performed in September and the post-operative liver volume was in line with the medical team's expectations.
As a leading medical centre in the central region, Taichung Veterans General Hospital has become a leader in the field of cutting-edge medicine in recent years, not only by hosting an international conference on advanced medicine for its 39th anniversary in 2011, but also by being the only hospital in Taiwan to be selected in the global smart hospital by Newsweek and Statista in September this year, making the hospital the only being listed in Taiwan and China.
Through a precise, interdisciplinary and cutting-edge integrative treatment plan, patients will be transformed from conservative systemic treatment to aggressive treatment with Y-90, liver resection and immunotherapy, allowing patients to have a better quality of life and prognosis.
