Franciscan Health Munster is offering a new treatment for patients in the Region who are combating liver cancer.
The hospital is the first in Northwest Indiana to offer Boston Scientific’s TheraSphere Yttrium-90 (Y-90) treatment. The technology targets tumors that are too large for surgical removal. The treatment provides a new option for patients with liver cancer.
“TheraSphere Y-90 can be a treatment that shrinks the tumor size such that the patient isn't cured by that, but they then become a candidate for other therapies such as surgery and transplant, which may be curative,” said Dr. Carl Valentin, Franciscan Health Munster diagnostic radiologist, in a press release.
TheraSphere uses glass microspheres infused with radioactive Yttrium-90. The outpatient procedure takes two hours. Doctors inject radioactive microspheres directly into the tumor through a catheter inserted through an artery in the leg and guided into the liver. By localizing the treatment, TheraSphere targets the tumor while preserving healthy surrounding tissue.
“It's a radioactive therapy, but it's one that instead of being targeted from outside of the body, it's targeted from inside the tumor through direct catheterization of the arteries,” Valentin said.
Clinical data from Boston Scientific shows a 93% three-year survival rate for patients with transplant or liver resection after undergoing the TheraSphere Y-90 treatment.
Franciscan Health is a 12-hospital health system with locations in Indiana and Illinois. A group of Catholic Sisters from Olpe, Germany founded Franciscan Health. They opened the system’s first hospital, now Franciscan Health Lafayette, in 1875.
