International Modern Hospital offers Regional Chemotherapy
Dubai, February 08, 2010 – Addressing the Press at the International Modern Hospital, Dubai alongside the official contract signing ceremony offering his services to the hospital, Prof. Dr. Karl Reinhard Aigner said – “The treatment called Regional Chemotherapy (RCT) is tolerated well by 95% of all patients; they suffer neither nausea nor hair loss. For me, my highest goal has always been to relieve pain.” Survival rates and prognoses for recovery lie significantly above those of the results for conventional chemotherapy especially in Breast and Pancreatic cancer. Good chances for treatment success exist for most cancers of other body organs, such as lung cancer, carcinomas of the stomach, liver, bladder, prostate, ovaries, anus as well as head and neck tumors.
Prof. Dr. Karl Reinhard Aigner and his highly specialized team of physicians will now be available for consultation and to administer Regional Chemotherapy at the International Modern Hospital in Dubai. Dr. Dia Hassan CEO International Modern Hospital said: “ I am extremely happy to be a witness to this historic moment. It is indeed our privilege to have the world-renowned oncologist Prof. Aigner, one of the pioneers in Regional Chemotherapy as a member of our team. This is sure to bring a big relief and hope to a lot of cancer patients from the region.”
Specialization in the treatment of critical diseases has shown globally to produce significantly improved outcomes. Importantly however the decision made here highlights how the Middle East and especially Dubai is now welcoming experts from across the globe to offer patients an increased choice in the options available.
Mortality figures for the region prove that cancer is one of the major causes of death in the region. The availability of Dr Aigner in the region can only help in the action that is required to reduce the figures. Cancer is considered to be an insidious, difficult to treat disease with many bad side effects on the bodies and the spirits of its victims. New hope is offered to cancer patients with a very effective therapy used on the tumor or the tumor area, what is called regional chemotherapy (RCT). Prof. Dr. Karl Reinhard Aigner, the pioneer of regional chemotherapy, will from now on be practicing the method he helped develop for the treatment of solid tumors at the International Modern Hospital in the United Arab Emirates.
Prof. Dr. Karl Reinhard Aigner, head of oncologic surgery at the Medias Klinikum GmbH & Co KG in Burghausen, Germany, has been successfully using regional chemotherapy for years. The basic concept is to treat organs and body parts affected by cancer very aggressively in one region only while filtering the chemotherapeutic agents out of the rest of the body. In doing so, the tumor shrinks and later can be removed without problems, or it may even completely disappear as a result of the therapy.
Regional Chemotherapy – different from other chemotherapies
Chemotherapy has been and continues to be one of the most common treatment methods for tumors. Poisonous chemical agents (cytotoxins) attack and destroy the tumor. For patients with carcinomas that have already metastasized, the use of poisonous chemical agents in the total body blood circulatory system is often the last chance to combat the illness. Despite newer developments, the poisonous agents damage not only the tumor cells but also healthy cells in areas like the hair follicles, bone marrow, and the mucous membrane of the digestive tract; they reduce the number of white corpuscles. As a result the patients lose their hair and complain about intense nausea and physical exhaustion. Moreover, conventional chemotherapy does not have great success in many patients since the concentration of poisonous agents that are administered is distributed over the entire body, leaving only a proportionally small number of cytotoxins to have an effect on the tumor cells.
Prof. Dr. Karl Reinhard Aigner uses a special form of chemotherapy that he himself developed, one that attacks the tumor in a sustained fashion because of its highly concentrated action. Working with his highly specialized team, he injects cytotoxins directly into the blood vessels that supply the tumor or the region of the body affected by the tumor – hence the name of the procedure: regional chemotherapy. “It's like the fire department,” explains Prof. Aigner. “We aim our hoses at the actual source of the fire and not at the intact surroundings.”
The advantages of this treatment are obvious. By injecting the cancer medication into the artery serving the tumor or tumor region, the poisonous chemicals can be administered with a very high concentration into the affected region. This leads in turn to a higher transfer of these poisonous chemicals into the tumor cells and results in a superior and more rapid effect at that spot. In contrast to conventional chemotherapy and depending on the type, size and state of metastasis of a tumor, a three to ten-fold higher concentration of cytotoxins can be injected, and in especially difficult cases up to 70 times as much. Nonetheless, there are hardly any side effects on the total body, since with the process of chemo filtration, “depoisoning,' in connection with every intervention the blood is cleaned. The quality of life of patients is generally significantly improved. All of the techniques developed by Prof. Aigner and his team for regional chemotherapeutic treatment is designed to minimize as far as possible actual operations. Between treatments, the patients can lead a normal life, and usually hold down a normal job.
Prof Aigner continues: “Most of the patients who come to us are those who have not responded well to chemotherapy or those who have had a relapse. Various medical studies have published results pointing to convincing data in terms of tumour response, quality of life and survival of those treated with RCT. For instance, it has been well established that pancreatic cancer, a killer cancer, responds well to RCT when other chemotherapies have failed. Breast cancer too has been treated with almost no side effects and without amputation. The response rate of breast cancer has been 80 to 95 per cent with RCT.
“Additionally, even advanced cancers of the bladder and the prostate are treated by means of the isolated pelvic perfusion technique with chemofiltration, avoiding mutilating surgery, impotence and incontinence,” he says.
Regional Chemotherapy - for whom?
Regional chemotherapy is suitable for all patients with solid tumors. To be sure, not every type of tumor is suitable for highly concentrated chemotherapy. Professor Aigner adds: “Our method either works right away or not at all.” In essence, just as in conventional cancer treatment, the greater the proportion of the body affected by the tumor, the smaller are the chances for success. Even in regional chemotherapy the dose of poisonous chemical agents cannot be increased without limit. Tumors in their early stages are especially good to treat with regional chemotherapy. Still, Prof. Aigner and his team have achieved very good results even in late stages and in supposedly hopeless cases.
Good chances for treatment success exist for most cancers of body organs, such as breast and lung cancer, carcinomas of the stomach, liver, pancreas, bladder, prostate, ovaries, and anus, and head and neck tumors.
