Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/360011
16 Busy grandma, Pam Ipock of Rogersville, doesn't want anything to slow her down, especially cancer. With Y-90, a new cancer treatment, she's able to spend more time with her family, including eight grandchildren, and continue volunteering in the church library. Pam was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2006 and following surgery she was cancer-free for almost five years. "I thought they had gotten it all. Then a little bit of it came back," she says. CoxHealth is the first hospital in southwest Missouri to offer a new proven technology for inoperable liver cancer, Yttrium-90 or Y-90. More than 40 patients at CoxHealth have benefited from this state-of- the-art minimally invasive, outpatient cancer treatment since July 2013. "It gives me hope," says Pam. While not typically a curative treatment, it provides benefits for patients with metastatic liver cancer. "Sometimes you can get a transplant if the liver cancer is your primary cancer," explains Charles Woodall, MD, surgical oncologist. "Y-90 can shrink tumor size to keep a patient on the transplant list longer. Additional benefits include an extended life, improved quality of life and fewer side effects as typically felt after standard cancer therapy." Pam says traditional chemotherapy was pretty rough. "With the Y-90, I've had nothing, no side effects really," she says. During this treatment, microspheres are injected into the tumor through a catheter in the femoral artery in the groin. Through this catheter the microspheres or resin beads containing Y-90 are navigated into the arteries of the liver. "These tiny beads, which can fit between the ridges of your fingerprints, have a limited range of emission. This allows high doses of isolated radiation directly to the site of the tumors, causing tumor cell death without harming surrounding healthy tissue in the liver," says Dr. Woodall. Patients wanting to learn more may call Ferrell-Duncan Clinic Surgical Oncology at 417/875-3525. Dr. Charles Woodall DON'T GIVE UP Pam Ipock