Patients with recurrent glioblastoma at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC–James) are the first to experience a novel treatment using a high-tech device designed to help control brain tumors that might otherwise be untreatable.
Following surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, patients wear the electrical “helmet” up to 18 hours a day. It bombards the brain with electrical currents. Patients say the machine is silent and easy to use.
“The electric currents interrupt the ability of cells to divide, causing their death and tumor shrinkage,” says Dr Robert Cavaliere, a neuro-oncologist at the OSUCCC – James. “The studies that have been performed suggest that this therapy is equivalent to chemotherapy in terms of outcomes.”
Diagnosed in about 10,000 Americans each year, glioblastoma is both the deadliest and the most common form of primary brain tumor in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society.
Approved by the FDA in 2011, the device is being used by doctors at 15 clinical centers nationwide.
According to Cavaliere, the device has slowed the growth of brain tumors and, in some cases, has been shown to shrink them. Furthermore, the electrical currents that kill cancer cells do not damage healthy cells. Thus the device can work just as well as chemotherapy, but without serious side effects.
For now the device is being applied only to brain tumors, but there are plans to test the technology on other types of cancer, says Cavaliere. Studies are also underway to determine if the device will work as an option immediately after diagnosis, rather than for recurrent disease only.
Source: The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.