What is cryoablation all about?

Here is a short overview of how cryoablation works. This is taken from They’re Mine and I’m Keeping Them. Check out Laura Ross-Paul’s book for yourself from my bookstore.

She writes:

“The body’s immune system is able to recognize the protein structure of the cancer cells when it cleans out the dead tissue and in about half the cases of cryo-ablation, naturally creates an immunity to the cancer. The book also relates the success at FUDA Hospital in Guangzhou, China in treating a variety of Stage 4 cancers by combining cryo-ablation and advanced immune system therapies, which increase the frequency of the occurrence of the natural immune effect to approximately eighty percent or higher of the breast cancer cases”.

“Cryoablation is used in a variety of clinical applications using hollow needles or cryoprobes through which cooled, thermally conductive, liquid nitrogen is circulated. Local anesthesia is  administered to the surface of the breast and then cryoprobes are inserted into or placed adjacent to tissue that is determined to be diseased in such a way that ablation will provide correction yielding benefit to the patient”.

“When the probes are in place, the cryogenic freezing unit removes heat (“cools”) from the tip of the probe and by extension from the surrounding tissues.” “Ablation occurs in tissue that has been frozen by at least three mechanisms:

  1. The formation of ice crystals within cells thereby disrupting membranes, and interrupting cellular metabolism among other processes

  2. Coagulation of blood thereby interrupting blood flow to the tissue in turn causing ischemia and cell death

  3. Induction of the so-called programmed cell death cascade

“Cancer survives in the body by camouflaging itself from the immune system. After a tumor is frozen, the body absorbs the dead tissue. The protein structure of the tumor remains intact after freezing, so the immune system can “see” the cancer and recognize that it is a foreign body. When it does, this triggers a complex immune process that often builds antibodies to the cancer. These antibodies then kill other tumors throughout the body. This is the ‘Immune Effect.'”

I have demonstrated this to my own patients by holding the fist of one hand up against the palm of my other hand. I then tell the woman that the fist represents the cancer which is a parasite and living off the organ that it has invaded, represented in this case, by my palm. My body cannot “See” the cancer and it continues to provide oxygen and nutrition to this parasitic cancer. However, once the cancer has been frozen with liquid nitrogen, the body and your immune system can recognize this foreign invader and destroys it.

Laura Ross-Paul calls herself a “Patient pioneer,” as one of the first women in the world to receive cryoablation by Dr. Littrup as the primary treatment for her multi-focused breast cancer. Laura and her husband Alex Paul had been searching for an option other than a mastectomy back in 2003.

Dr. Littrup has since been doing clinical studies using this technology to freeze breast cancer tumors by injecting them with liquid nitrogen to freeze the tumor in place. This therapy completely conserves the breast. Surgery is not necessary and the cryoablation kills the cancer as well as in any satellite breast cancers in other regions and lymph nodes 85% of the time as part of the immune effect. Cryoablation of cancer leaves tumor-associated antigens that stimulate an anti-tumor immune response. If anything should return in the 15% of the women for whom the immune effect did not work, they could have another cryotherapy or have surgery as the third back up plan, not the first as it is currently.

I have become friends with Laura Ross-Paul and she and  are trying to network and raise awareness of this life and breast-saving technology. We are also trying to bring cryoablation to the Pacific Northwest at the time of publication of this book.

I have also been sending women to other clinics that are providing cryoablation so they can get the care that they desire until we have the technology here in Oregon and Washington. There are clinical trials going on in different clinics across the US right now.