A new non-toxic radioactive patch has emerged to treat skin cancer that could provide patients with an easier, softer way to go combat skin cancer. The patch would be a nice alternative to all the negative side effects associated with radiation.
The patch was developed and tested by a group led by Priyanka Gupta, a nucleur medicine techinician at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India.
Their findings were presented this summer at the the annual meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine in Toronto, and detailed in an article on Oncology Nursing News entitled “Radioactive Patch Could Be Option for Skin Malignancies”.
They tested the patch on a small group of 8 adults suffering from basal cell carcinoma. They elected to try out this form of treatment rather than undergo surgery or radiotherapy.
“While basal cell carcinoma is rarely fatal, it can be a painful and disfiguring disease,” explained Priyanka Gupta, a nuclear medicine technologist at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and lead author of the study demonstrating this finding. “It’s exciting to think that this patch can deliver treatment on an outpatient basis with little risk of the scarring or other complications that surgery or radiotherapy present. This study opens a new dimension not only for treating skin malignancies, but also for nuclear medicine therapy in general.””
All of the patients used in the study had basal cell carcinoma on their face while having no cancer cells in their underlying facial structure. The patchs were then indiviudually constructed and tailored to each specific patient’s skin cancer lesions.
Basal cell carcinoma is one of the most common forms of skin cancer. While rarely fatal, it can cause a lot of damage if allowed to spread to other areas of the body. Each year about 1 million Americans are diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma.
The patches contained radioactive phosphorous-32, and we worn by the patients for 3 hours a day for 3 days over the course of the week. Three months after treatment the results can be interupretted as nothing but a success. Biopsies had revealed that the patients had no residual malignant cancer, while at the same time suffering few adverse effects and minimal scarring.
Its a very small test group were talking about here, but if these results could be repeated on a large scale this would be a major step forward. Nobody likes to go under the knife which almost certainly entails a hospital stay. We all also know about the massive amount of negative side effects that come with radiation treatment. If you could just walk in to a doctor’s office and get a patch to wear around for a few days instead, that decision would be an easy one for most people.
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