Mount Sinai Hospital first in US to offer radiopaque bead liver cancer treatment

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Visualising the radiopaque beads in the blood vessels

The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, USA has become the first in the country to offer radiopaque bead treatment for liver cancer patients. The minimally invasive treatment using the M1 Lumi Bead loaded with doxorubicin, is now available for patients with inoperable and difficult-to-treat liver cancer.

The M1 Lumi beads were designed with technology that allows for real time tracking of the bead’s location during embolization procedure, during which a catheter is used to thread the beads into blood vessels leading to the tumour. Doctors should be able to see where the beads are placed, and confirm bead placement will block the blood flow feeding the tumour. The device was approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration in December 2015. Mount Sinai participated in comprehensive clinical evaluation of the M1 Lumi Beads.

“This is a game-changing tool,” says Edward Kim, director of Interventional Oncology and associate professor of Radiology and Surgery in the Division of Interventional Radiology at The Mount Sinai Hospital. “In the past, we had no way to verify where the beads were placed in the blood vessels or whether they remained in the intended location over time. Now we can see the location, and adjust if a portion of the tumour has been missed while the patient is on the table without repeating the procedure…This new tool exemplifies precision medicine and is a new standard of care in cancer treatment. This is a very exciting time in cancer research and treatment,” Kim says.