Cryotherapy of Implanted Cancer in the Rat Liver

Abstract

In order to investigate the effect of freezing liver cancers, cryosurgery was performed on solid liver tumors in rats. 8 of 21 Sprague-Dawley rats with single liver implants of Walker-256 tumor were apparently cured of these cancers by cryotherapy. Two others had liver cancer controlled, but had spread of cancer to other parts of the body. There was one operative death (not included in data), but no other serious complication from the procedure.

Treatment of colorectal liver metastases by cryotherapy

“…The modern era of cryosurgery was inspired by Cooper's landmark paper in 1963 in which he described using a closed liquid nitrogen probe system to freeze liver tumors in lab animals [52]. In the early 1970s, there were more reports describing the use of cryosurgery to treat liver tumors in lab animals [53,54]. During this same period, Zhou et al began treating primary hepatomas with surface cryosurgical probes [55].…”