A ‘chemo-bath’ which delivers toxic cancer drugs to just one organ in the body has been used on patients in the UK for the first time, say doctors. Chemotherapy drugs kill rapidly growing cells such as cancers, but they also attack healthy parts of the body.
Doctors at Southampton General Hospital believe targeting just one organ can prevent side effects. They also say it means they can give higher doses without causing damage to the patient.
Chemotherapy drugs are normally injected into the veins of patients. However, the whole body, rather than just the tumour, is exposed. It results in side effects such as fatigue, feeling sick, hair loss and damage to fertility.
Two patients in the UK have now received chemotherapy focused on just their liver. Both had a rare eye cancer which had spread to the liver. The operation works by inflating balloons inside blood vessels on either side of the liver to isolate it from the rest of the body. The liver is then pumped full of chemotherapy drugs, which are filtered out before the liver is reconnected to the main blood supply.
It means only a tiny fraction of the chemotherapy dose ends up in the body.
Dr Brian Stedman, a consultant interventional radiologist, said: ‘To cut off an organ from the body for 60 minutes, soak it in a high dose of drug and then filter the blood almost completely clean before returning is truly groundbreaking.
‘Previously, the outlook for patients specifically suffering from cancer which has spread to the liver has been poor because standard chemotherapy’s effect is limited by the unwanted damage the drug causes to the rest of the body.’
The surgery took place in the past three months and both patients are said to be doing well and their tumours ‘all look smaller’, he said.
Dr Stedman told the BBC: ‘In 20 years’ time the idea of injecting a drug which poisons the whole body for a cancer in just one small area will seem bonkers.’
He suggested that any organ which could be easily separated from the blood supply, such as the kidney, pancreas and lungs, would be suitable for this kind of approach. However, he said the method was ‘in its infancy’ and he was ‘not sure this is the finished product or the end of the story’.
The technique is also being tested in the US and elsewhere in Europe. BBC

A new working party report from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) says there should be a national system for recognising very sick patients whose condition is deteriorating and who need more intensive medical or nursing care. The working party also developed and piloted a National Early Warning Score for this purpose, which if implemented across the NHS, would result in a step-change upwards in patient safety.
Visit the NEWS pages of the RCP website to download the report and resources.
Speaking at a press conference to launch the National Early Warning Score, Professor Bryan Williams, chair of the working party, estimated that 6,000 lives could be saved by its use.*
The report, National early warning score (NEWS); standardising the assessment of acute-illness severity in the NHS, was produced by a multidisciplinary working group including doctors, nurses and managers. Clinical observation charts and e-learning materials were also produced by the NEWS educational programme, a collaborative project funded by the RCP, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), the National Outreach Forum, and NHS Training for Innovation.
Each acute hospital bed has a chart that is used to record measurements such as the patient

According to a recent study, shift work is associated with an increased risk of a heart attack or stroke. Analysing the results of dozens of studies involving more than two million people, researchers looked at the health impact of evening shifts, irregular or unspecified shifts, mixed schedules, night shifts and rotating shifts. They compared the findings with non-shift workers and the general population. It appeared that heart attacks and strokes were more common among shift workers. Shift work was associated with a 23% increased risk of a heart attack and a 5% increased risk of a stroke. Night shifts were associated with the steepest increase in risk for coronary events. Whether you work nights, evenings or regular office hours, eating healthily, getting active and quitting smoking can make a big difference to your heart health irrespective of whether one works nights, evenings or regular office hours. The study was published in the British Medical Journal.

Contrary to popular thought, regular exercise before and during pregnancy could have beneficial effects for women that develop high blood pressure during gestation, human physiology professor Jeff Gilbert said, summarising a new study by his research team.
Gilbert