HOUSTON — There’s a new option for some women fighting breast cancer. Instead of surgery, doctors freeze then thaw the tumor, dissolving it into the body.
Helen Streaker, 86, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992. It’s come back twice since then. When she discovered a lump in her breast last year, she was treated with cryoablation.
“I think it’s my obligation to share this. It gives me great joy to share it,” Streaker said.
Dr. Luz Venta with Houston Methodist said cryoablation is a fancy word for saying her tumor was frozen. A thin probe is inserted into the breast during the outpatient procedure. It forms an ice bubble around the cancer. Doctors then thaw, then re-freeze the tumor.
“Some of the studies that have come out show when you freeze a cancer, the cancer cell bursts and it spills antigens or molecules that then are a red flag to the immune system that tells the immune system: here I am, I’m a cancer,” Venta said.
She said freezing combined with immune therapy has been shown to be more effective than immune therapy alone. It can also help the body identify and fight cancer cells in other parts of the body.
Venta said the treatment won’t put oncologists or surgeons out of business, but it’s an important new tool to fight cancer.
“Whenever the age of fragility comes where any little knock knocks you down just a little bit, this is an option for saying: hey we’re going to do something easy to tolerate that won’t knock you down even a little bit,” Venta said.
Houston Methodist will soon begin a clinical trial further testing cryoablation on breast cancer patients. Venta said research over the next five years will help determine which patients benefit from this treatment most.