For some people with breast cancer or other breast lesions, a new treatment called cryoablation offers hope for removing tumors without going under the knife.
Learn how MetroHealth helped pioneer this newer treatment.
Contributed by: Rakhshanda Layeequr Rahman, MD | Director of Cancer Institute
To remove small cancerous tumors or lesions from your breasts, surgeons often perform a surgical procedure called a lumpectomy. Like all surgeries, it comes with risks, recovery and scars. Now, certain people with early-stage breast cancer or non-cancerous lesions called fibroadenomas have a non-surgical option: cryoablation.
MetroHealth now offers cryoablation as a state-of-the-art treatment option for those with early-stage breast cancer. Rakhshanda Rahman, MD, director of the MetroHealth Cancer Institute, is the clinical leader for this new program and helps answer some common questions people may have.
Cryoablation involves freezing breast lesions and tumors to destroy them
Here’s how it works:
- A numbing agent is injected directly into the breast using a tiny needle.
- Guided by ultrasound, a slightly larger needle – the size of a pen tip – is inserted into the tumor or lesion.
- The probe is connected to a machine containing liquid nitrogen, which the doctor sends through the probe directly to the tumor or lesion for long enough to freeze it.
- After the probe comes out, a small bandage or liquid glue is all that’s needed to close the tiny hole.
- You may feel a bump in your breast; that’s the dead tissue. Over time, it softens and dissolves on its own.
Cryoablation offers several benefits over lumpectomy:
- No hospital stay. The procedure takes 30 minutes from start to finish.
- No recovery time. You can run errands or go back to work the same day.
- No general anesthesia.
- Virtually no scar. More than 95% of clinical trial patients reported satisfaction with the cosmetic results.
Cryoablation is a treatment option for breast cancer if you meet the following criteria:
- Are over age 60 and post-menopausal
- Have a low-risk tumor. Doctors determine that from your biopsy
- Have a tumor that is small enough, no larger than 1.5 centimeters
- Have HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer.
If you want to use cryoablation to remove fibroadenomas, which are bothersome but not cancerous, it’s less strict. You can be any age. The size of the lesion doesn’t matter as much, but if it’s too large, the cryoablation may not completely kill it.
MetroHealth Cancer Institute
MetroHealth is the first hospital in Northeast Ohio that offers cryoablation. For more information or to make an appointment, call the MetroHealth Cancer Institute at 216-778-7328
Or visit our website: metrohealth.org/breast-cancer and click the Treatment tab.
