Cancer Surgery History Made At UW Medical Center
But what happened at the UW Medical Center Tuesday made history.
74-year-old Chuck Moore is a prostate cancer patient.
"It can be scary," he says. "The word cancer is scary to everybody."
Moore had a procedure that's been around for decades - called brachytherapy. It involves implanting tiny radioactive seeds into the tumor.
But Chuck is the first person in the world to use a new seed called Cesium-131. Cesium packs a powerful punch of radiation that both attacks the tumor and then dissipates much faster than other seeds -- 10 days instead of two months.
Dr. Leroy Korb performed the brachytherapy.
"The radiation leaves the seeds in the body that much quicker," Dr. Korb explains. "Essentially the treatment will be over in a matter of weeks rather than a matter of months. I predict the treatment will be better with regard to side effects and certainly with exposure to other organs in the pelvis of the patient himself. They'll receive radiation for a much shorter time."
Cesium was developed at IsoRay in Richland, with experts from Hanford; Isotopes once developed for war are now saving lives.
"This stuff is bad stuff until you change it to good," says IsoRay CEO Roger Girard. "It's a huge, bright future for medicine. If we can continue on and do this, it's endless."
That means attacking other cancers.
If there's success with prostate cancer, tumors in the breast, head, neck and liver could be next.
Which means a lot of people will be following Chuck Moore's recovery.
Doctors predict he'll experience milder, shorter side effects. And that a few years from now, he'll be cured of cancer.
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