The positive effects of a new therapy that involves inserting an echoendoscope into the mount and destroying pancreatic tumors using radiofrequency heat was recently verified.
Solid tumors arising in the pancreas are divided into pancreatic cancer and other benign tumors. A pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (PNET), which is a kind of benign tumor, is less malignant yet slowly progress into a cancer and is metastasized, so that it has to be removed by surgery.
A research team led by Prof. Seo Dong-wan of the Department of Gastroenterology treated eight patients with neuroendocrine tumors, which were highly likely to become cancerous, and two patients with pseudopapillary tumors using endoscopic ultrasound and followed up on them for an average of 13 months. As a result, tumors disappeared in seven patients (70%), according to imaging examinations such as CT, and a substantial reduction in the size of the tumors was shown in three patients (30%).
In this study, the research team tried to destroy pancreatic tumors using a high-frequency probe instead of surgery, which is the conventional therapy. Inserting an echoendoscope into the mouth and putting a probe into the tumor and then supplying electric energy will generate high frequency inside the tumor tissue. This high frequency produces frictional heat inside the tissue to cauterize tumor cells.
If surgery is used to remove tumors by cutting off parts of the pancreas, the pancreas can no longer function properly, impairing the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar and digestion. Eventually, complications such as diabetes and indigestion occur in about 30% of patients. However, the endoscopic ultrasound-guided intervention does not cut off parts of the pancreas, so that its functions are properly maintained to ensure fewer complications and faster recovery, improving the quality of patients’ lives.
The research team began developing a probe which could be inserted into an echoendscope and used in high-frequency procedures for pancreatic tumors in 2010 in cooperation with the Korean company STARmed. The probe was approved as a medical device after going through animal testing and preclinical testing.
Prof. Seo Dong-wan (photo) said, “There is still room for improvement since the probe is applicable to relatively small-sized tumors of 1–3 centimeters, but the R&D result is expected to cause a significant paradigm shift in pancreatic cancer treatment. We will further study to expand the ranges for endoscopic ultrasound-guided intervention and improve the quality of patients’ lives.” The result of this study, funded by the Healthcare R&D Project led by the Ministry of Welfare and Health, was recently published in the United European Gastroenterology Journal, an international journal of gastroenterology.