As cold as a witch's…Freezing breast cancer tumors?

Source: Annals of Surgical Oncology; Medline

It may be still in the early lab stages -how early? Well they are still testing the technique upon mice with tumors, however, researchers have found that freezing breast cancer tumors (cryoablation) helps to stop the spread of breast cancer.

Not only did the rapid freezing, through application of a cold probe to the tumor site, kill breast cancer tumors, there was a better outcome in terms of tumor spread (metastasis) to the lungs.

All is not lab mice though.  Cryoablation is being actively used to treat actual human patients with prostate cancer, kidney cancers and cancers that have spread to the bone marrow with encouraging results.  Hopefully this will be another tool to fight breast cancer in the near future.

~Posted by D.M. Schwadron, Esquire.