A win-win option for pancreatic cancer patients: interventional therapy

  Pancreatic cancer is a highly malignant tumor with a mortality to morbidity ratio of 0.99:1. Because there are often no symptoms in the early stage of the disease, many patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage and lose the chance of surgical resection. The pain caused by chemotherapy makes many patients shy away from it, so giving up treatment becomes a helpless choice.  In fact, there is a good option to achieve the effect of chemotherapy and avoid the pain caused by chemotherapy, and that is interventional therapy. Last year, the Interventional Group of the Radiology Branch of the Chinese Medical Association made detailed guidelines for interventional treatment of pancreatic cancer that cannot be surgically resected, highly affirming the effectiveness of interventional treatment of pancreatic cancer, especially transarterial infusion chemotherapy. Because the local drug concentration of transarterial chemotherapy is higher than that of intravenous drug, better therapeutic effect can be achieved.  Clinical studies have shown that interventional therapy has achieved remarkable results in improving symptoms related to pancreatic cancer, prolonging survival, reducing liver metastases and treating liver metastases after they occur.  How is interventional treatment for pancreatic cancer performed?  The catheter is placed in the blood supply artery of pancreatic cancer, and then the anti-tumor drugs are injected into the blood supply artery of pancreatic cancer through the catheter, which can make the local tumor tissues have high drug concentration for a long time and prolong the contact time of the drugs to the tumor tissues to kill the tumor cells, while the drug concentration in other organs of the body is very low. The side effects brought by chemotherapy are very small.  If there are conditions, doctors can also put one end of the catheter in the blood supply of pancreatic cancer, and the other end is buried under the skin of the chest, just like a pacemaker, so that when anti-tumor drugs are needed, they can be administered through this catheter, just as convenient as an IV, but the anti-tumor drugs are all injected into the tumor, instead of flowing all over the body as in the case of systemic chemotherapy.  No matter which method is used, it has very, very low risk and is a minimally invasive surgery that does not require high age and physical condition and is suitable for all kinds of pancreatic cancer patients who cannot be removed surgically.