Medics at a St. Petersburg oncology center have successfully performed six surgeries to remove 170 metastases from a patient’s lungs / TASS....
 |
| Medics at a St. Petersburg oncology center have successfully performed six surgeries to remove 170 metastases from a patient’s lungs / TASS. |
It is noteworthy that most cancer-related deaths stem from metastasis rather than the primary tumors themselves. The N.N. Petrov National Medical Research Center of Oncology in St. Petersburg, one of Russia's largest diagnostic and treatment facilities for cancer patients, issued a statement on Tuesday, asserting, "There are no analogues in world oncology for this case."
The patient arrived at the center with numerous metastases in his lungs, resulting from osteosarcoma diagnosed in 2020. Over four years, he underwent chemotherapy in Moscow, followed by tumor removal along with part of his shoulder, and several rounds of chemotherapy in Germany. This treatment halted lesion growth. However, according to German protocols, surgeons typically remove no more than 10-15 metastases during a single surgery.
"Removing 30 or 50 metastases from the lower lung lobe alone poses significant trauma to the body, necessitating sufficient recovery time," explained Yevgeny Levchenko, head of the thoracic oncology department at N.N. Petrov NMRC. This rationale led to the decision to perform the removals across six separate surgeries. Three of the surgeries employed the method of "isolated chemoperfusion," the medical center's modernized and patented technique, which can save patients with severe Stage 4 cancer.
This approach targets the smallest metastases within lung tissue, thereby thwarting the emergence of new metastases. Levchenko concluded by stating that the patient's prognosis is now "most optimistic."