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DiscussionAnyone have experience with liver lesions from pancreatic cancer?
Pancreatic Cancer | Last Active: Jun 3 9:41am | Replies (74)Comment receiving replies
Replies to "My husband also can't have surgery because of vessel involvement I think when we go for..."
@bceg1969 , I've copied and pasted this from an older discussion. I hope something in it might be helpful...
... this is kind of recent, long-shot stuff, but are you familiar with HAI (Hepatic Artery Infusion)? It's where surgeons implant a pump with a chemo reservoir that has a catheter directly to one of the arteries that feeds the liver.
This context of this video:
is for mets to liver from colorectal cancer and bile duct cancer but _might_ be applicable to pancreatic cancers with the right surgeon/institution.
The video link above features Dr. Michael Cavner, who did his fellowship at MSKCC, and describes how the work there expanded as those fellows graduated and moved to new centers.
I noticed that a fairly new/young surgeon at Mayo Jacksonville, Dr. Katherine Poruk at lists HAI and Whipple among procedures she performs. She did her fellowship at MSKCC and co-published several papers with Dr. Christopher Wolfgang during her residency at Johns Hopkins, so she or someone with similar background might be a good person to discuss options with.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/biographies/poruk-katherine-m-d/bio-20545266
In Dr. Cavner's video, he mentions the importance of a pre-infusion saline test to make sure the chemo is _not_going to the pancreas (context again being to treat a colorectal met to the liver), but for someone with a tumor also in the pancreas, it might actually be desired and doable.
I had only read of direct arterial infusion for pancreatic cancers in rats, but they were able to obtain chemo concentrations in the pancreas with 1/300th the dose of what they needed for conventional systemic chemo through a port while minimizing systemic side effects.