My husband has bowel ca and liver mets(numerous).I am trying to find out if anyone has experience of Selective Internal Radiation therapy(SIRT).Liver surgery may not be an option so Im trying to find something!
We have been told it's not offered where we stay but we're willing to go anywhere(we stay in Scotland).

Any thoughts MUCH appreciated.


Lx

I'd not heard of SIRT before, but had heard of SIRTEX. So I looked around on the web. On this site

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16979443?dopt=AbstractPlus

I discovered that "Selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) is a relatively new commercially available microbrachytherapy technique for treatment of malignant hepatic lesions using (90)Y embedded in resin microspheres, which are infused directly into the hepatic arterial circulation".

This sounds the same thing as SIRTEX, which I know about because our daughter (age 24) had a bowel tumour removed earlier this year and is currently undergoing chemo with a view to having some surgery in the autumn. One possibility is a referral to Hammersmith (in London) and they appear to offer some treatments, including SIRTEX.

http://www.hpbcancer.co.uk/patients/sirtex-liver-cancer-treatment/

The good news is that this is not the only alternative to surgery; some more are detailed on the Macmillan site:

http://www.cancerbackup.org.uk/Cancertype/Liversecondary/Treatment/Newertreatments

I do hope this is helpful.

Gary

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"One step at a time"

Yip, have had this treatment.. I think I was the 6th person given SIRT treatment in Christies (SIRTEX is the company in Germany who provide the actual treatment). There was also a BBC Interview about it becoming available on NHS. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/01_january/21/christie.shtml

Any other questions please feel free to contact me.

Cheers

Laura

Thanks Gary and Laura for taking the time to post.
Gary-hope your daughter is doing ok(Ive been on the forum since Feb but not posted much)
Laura,will send you a message to hear of your experience.

Lx

Hi, have any of you had PET scan results after SIRT? My husband had SIRT in august and we had the scan results last week. The treatment worked all but one of the tumours are now inactive, what does this mean?