Freezing kills off kidney tumours

By Matthew Hill
BBC News

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See part of the kidney operation

Kidney cancer patients are being offered new hope of a cure with a treatment that kills tumours by freezing them.

Radical cryotherapy, as its known, is far less invasive than traditional methods like surgery and should reduce the need for transplants.

Peter Phelps from Trowbridge is about to have an operation that he hopes will save his life.

He has three tumours in his kidneys and the only other option for his surgeon would probably have been to remove the cancer through surgery - this may have caused Mr Phelps to lose his kidneys altogether.

He has only got a 5% function to kidneys, and his recent operation at Bristol's Southmead Hospital was his last chance of a cure.

Mr Phelps said: "I was facing death the other way as far as I was concerned, so this is a chance I did not ever think I was going to get.

"It is a chance which I am going to grab."

Mr Phelps is one of around 7,000 people a year to be diagnosed with kidney cancer - one of the top ten biggest cancer killers in the UK. It affects mainly men.

Ball of ice

During his keyhole surgery several needles were pushed into the tumours. Argon gas was then pumped via the needle tip.

This creates a large ice ball of minus 40 degrees celcius to cover the tumour, freezing it and destroying the cancer cells.

We have to make sure we get it right the first time Francis Keeley Consultant urologist

Southmead has already used the technique successfully to treat men with prostate cancer, and was one of the first in the country to test it on kidney patients.

Of the 40 to 50 patients the hospital has treated so far, none have seen their cancer return.

Francis Keeley, consultant urologist at Southmead, said that after traditional surgery he would have expected two or three cancers to have returned in that time-frame.

He said: "If the kidney cancer were to spread then there are not very good options available, so we have to make sure we get it right the first time."

Mr Keeley stressed use of the technique was still in its earlydays. Southmead is collecting data on outcomes for kidney patients from centres across the UK.

He said: "We still need to look at long-term (five-year) data before it can be considered a routine form of treatment."

The Bristol team runs workshops twice a year for urologists in the UK and Europe to learn the technique.

Jean Slocombe, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said cryotherapy was most suitable for patients with small, early-stage disease who might not be able to have surgery for other health reasons.

She said: "Research suggests that kidney cancer is more likely to return after cryotherapy if the tumour is bigger than 4cm across.

"National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidance issued in 2007 said that cryotherapy is a safe treatment and can destroy cancer cells - but it isn't yet clear whether it destroys tumours completely and how the treatment affects long term survival."