Cryosurgery offers new hope C ryosurgery, a procedure that uses liquid nitrogen to freeze tumors, has previously been used to treat skin and prostate cancer. Now Emory University Hospital is one of the few medical centers in the nation to apply the technique to patients with liver cancer. Often, it is their last hope for recovery. Previously, patients who did not respond to chemotherapy had no other treatment options and did not survive more than three years after diagnosis. There simply would not be enough liver tissue left to function adequately.
Cryosurgery involves much less removal of the normal liver than traditional surgery.
Although cryosurgery has been in use since the 1960s, it has not been used to treat liver cancer because there was no reliable way to monitor the exact placement of the instruments that delivered the liquid nitrogen. In 1986, a study showed that ultrasound done in the operating room could be used to identify the number and position of the tumors as well as to track the freezing process. Follow-up studies of cryosurgery in animals and humans showed significant therapeutic promise, and doctors have recently begun to use it as a standard treatment for advanced liver cancer. I had the surgery in January 1996, and I have gone back for two CAT scans . . I have always been healthy, but I never really appreciated what a blessing good health is.