Spinal metastases are a significant cause of morbidity in patients with stage IV cancer. The spine is the third most common site for cancer cells to metastasize, following the lung and the liver. Approximately 60-70% of patients with metastatic cancer will have spinal metastasis. Treatment of spinal mets focuses on providing palliation for care. While medical management, radiation therapy, and even surgery can be beneficial, controlling bone pain in cancer is tremendously difficult.
DFINE Inc., a developer of radiofrequency targeted therapies for vertebral pathologies out of San Jose, California, released last week results from two studies presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s Annual Scientific Meeting. The results showed the benefits of advanced targeted-radiofrequency ablation (t-RFA) therapy using the STAR Tumor Ablation System for the treatment of painful malignant lesions of the vertebral body. The STAR system uses a single radiofrequency ablation treatment to provide rapid pain relief. The technology is unique from radiation or medical therapy because it does not require delay of primary oncologic treatment.
The first study, out of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, showed that the STAR System provided a significant clinical advantage by allowing access to spinal lesions not typically accessible with traditional ablative devices. The second study, out of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, showed that patients who fail chemotherapy and radiation had clinically significant pain relief with the STAR System. According to the press release:
“The STAR System is a highly effective tool capable of providing rapid pain relief from metastatic vertebral body tumors,” Dr. Jennings [primary investigator of the WUSM study] said. “We have found it to be particularly valuable when managing patients whose spinal tumors were unresponsive to traditional radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Now we can easily treat them using t-RFA without significant interruption to their primary cancer treatment regimen.”
Press release: New Studies Show Clinically Significant Palliation of Painful Spinal Metastases with DFINE STAR(TM) Tumor Ablation System…
Product homepage: STAR Tumor Ablation System for RF ablation therapy…
