Robert Wood Johnson Offering Breakthrough Liver Tumor Therapy

Friday, February 15, 2008

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – With approximately 150,000 new cases and 50,000 fatalities annually, colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. And, one of three people diagnosed will see it spread to their liver, a grim diagnosis that once had limited effective treatment options.

That’s exactly what Jadwiga Glomska of South Amboy, N.J., faced earlier this year. As a licensed practical nurse, she understood better than most patients the likely outcome of her condition; the five-year survival rate is less than 10 percent.

“At 50 years old, dying was just not in my plan,” said Glomska.

She was about six months short of her five-year, cancer-free milestone when she was told she had an inoperable, seven-centimeter tumor on her liver that had metastasized from colon cancer treated in 2002.

What Glomska didn’t know about was a new treatment for inoperable liver cancer developed in Australia and offered through very few doctors and hospitals throughout the country and only one doctor and hospital in New Jersey: Dr. John Nosher and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) in New Brunswick, a nationally recognized leader in cancer care.

Glomska credits her medical team with immediately referring her to Dr. Nosher to perform this novel treatment known as Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT).

SIRT is a non-surgical, outpatient therapy that uses microscopic radioactive spheres, called SIR-Spheres® to deliver radiation directly to the site of the liver tumors. As they travel through the bloodstream, they are trapped in the small blood vessels of the tumor and deliver their dose of radiation.

This targeted therapy destroys the tumors and spares healthy tissue. Unlike conventional external beam radiation that can only be applied to limited areas of the body, SIRT directly delivers more potent doses of radiation to the cancer cells over a longer period of time.

According to Dr. Nosher, chief of Radiology Service at RWJUH and clinical professor and chairman of the Department of Radiology at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, “SIRT provides a means of delivering high-dose radiation therapy to liver tumors by administration directly into the liver artery supplying the tumor. This procedure provides promise to patients in whom chemotherapy has failed but also when combined with chemotherapy may improve the results of chemotherapy alone.”

After beginning the SIRT treatment in July and undergoing a scan in September, there is no evidence of the tumor. Mrs. Glomska has already returned to work and resumed her daily routine.

“I really want people to know that there is a treatment for a dire diagnosis like mine,” she said.

SIR-Spheres® microspheres are administered by a specially trained interventional radiologist. Through a small incision in the patient's groin, a flexible catheter is guided into the liver under x-ray vision. The catheter is moved through the hepatic artery and positioned to allow for targeted infusion of the microspheres to the liver tumor, which take about 15 minutes to be infused.

The procedure takes about one hour, patients are monitored for a few hours after the procedure and most are discharged within 24 hours. The therapy is FDA-approved to treat secondary liver cancer where the cancer originates in the colon and then spreads to the liver. SIR-Spheres® microspheres were developed in 1980 in Australia by Sirtex Medical, Inc., (www.sirtex.com) and were approved by the FDA in March 2002. Approximately 90 physicians in the United States use SIR-Spheres® microspheres in more than 86 medical centers.

About Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital

Selected as one of four hospitals nationwide to offer the world's first self-contained implantable artificial heart, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (www.rwjuh.edu) is a 600-bed academic medical center and the principal hospital of UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, NJ. Robert Wood Johnson is an innovative leader in advancing state-of-the-art care in medicine. Its Centers of Excellence include cardiovascular care from minimally invasive heart surgery to transplantation, cancer care, and women's and children's care including The Bristol-Myers Squibb Children's Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (www.bmsch.org). The hospital is also a Level 1 Trauma Center and serves as a national resource in its ground-breaking approaches to emergency preparedness.

The hospital has earned significant national recognition for clinical quality and patient safety. Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital is ranked among the top 50 hospitals in the nation for both heart and heart surgery and respiratory disorders, according to U.S.News & World Report's 2008 ranking of "America's Best Hospitals." The American College of Surgeons' Commission on Cancer has rated Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital among the nation's best comprehensive cancer centers. The Leapfrog Group rated Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital as one of the 50 exceptional U.S. hospitals, as published in Consumers Digest magazine. Harvard University researchers, in a study commissioned by The Commonwealth Fund, identified Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital as one of the top 10 hospitals in the nation for clinical quality. Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital is also a recipient of the prestigious Magnet Award for Nursing Excellence for more than 10 consecutive years.

return to top of page