The main reason why it s so lethal is that up until now there have been really no good treatment options for those patients. The gold standard for treatment for patients with solid tumors such as liver cancer is surgery. A transplant is one limited-treatment option for patients with primary liver cancer, but really I m talking primarily about surgical resection, removal of the tumor, just going in and actually cutting out the tumor. The idea is pretty simple for surgery. If you have a tumor and it s possible to cut it out or remove it, then generally that s a patient s best option.
Liver cancer is one of the most prevalent and deadly forms of cancer in the world today.
There are about two million cases worldwide each year. We are selling this product all over the world today for liver cancer. We have sold 12,500 of our devices to date. We recently got an FDA clearance specifically for liver cancer this past March, which we added to a general approval that we had had in place prior to that. That s a big development for the company.