Drug-eluting beads transarterial chemoembolization for hepatocellular carcinoma: Current state of the art.

Drug-eluting beads transarterial chemoembolization for hepatocellular carcinoma: Current state of the art. World J Gastroenterol. 2018 Jan 14;24(2):161-169 Authors: Facciorusso A Abstract Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) represents the current gold standard for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients in intermediate stage. Conventional TACE (cTACE) is performed with the injection of an emulsion of a chemotherapeutic drug with lipiodol into the artery feeding the tumoral nodules, followed by embolization of the same vessel to obtain a synergistic effect of drug cytotoxic activity and ischemia. Aim of this review is to summarize the main characteristics of drug-eluting beads (DEB)-TACE and the clinical results reported so far in the literature. A literature search was conducted using PubMed until June 2017. In order to overcome the drawbacks of cTACE, namely lack of standardization and unpredictability of outcomes, non-absorbable embolic microspheres charged with cytotoxic agents (DEBs) have been developed. DEBs are able to simultaneously exert both the therapeutic components of TACE, either drug-carrier function and embolization, unlike cTACE in which applying the embolic agent is a second moment after drug injection. This way, risk of systemic drug release is minimal due to both high-affinity carrier activity of DEBs and absence of a time interval between injection and embolization. However, despite promising results of prelimi...
Source: World Journal of Gastroenterology : WJG - Category: Gastroenterology Authors: Tags: World J Gastroenterol Source Type: research