- Cryotherapy - Will you ice water?
- How is
Cryotherapy - a kind of minimally invasive therapy in which the diseased tissue, including cancer cells that are frozen and destroyed with the help of extremely low temperatures. As a rule, Cryotherapy uses liquid nitrogen or argon.
What is cryotherapy used?
Cryotherapy can be used locally or percutaneously or surgically. Local therapy is used in some skin diseases. If the tumor to be removed or reduced, under the skin's surface, liquid nitrogen or argon gas is introduced by means of a hollow needle. In some cases, this requires excision of skin surgical instruments.
Cryotherapy is used to treat skin tumors, precancerous skin growths or moles, which began lesions, nodules, retinoblastoma, a cancer of the prostate
Prostate Cancer - enough to remove the tumor?
, Liver and cervix - especially in those cases where it is impossible to remove a tumor surgically, and also other diseases. Sometimes cryotherapy used to treat tumors in other parts of the body, e.g., kidney, bone, lung and breast (including benign tumors in the breast).
Preparation for the procedure
In the treatment of skin diseases, patients are advised to take 400 mg of ibuprofen
Ibuprofen: anti-inflammatory drug
half an hour before the procedure. It helps to relieve minor discomfort for some patients who complain. In other cases it is recommended to take a dose of antibiotics to protect t possible infection. Before percutaneous and particularly surgical cryotherapy patients must temporarily stop taking blood thinners to reduce the chance of excessive bleeding due to the procedure. Pregnant women and women who suspect they may be pregnant, please inform your doctor.
How does cryotherapy
Skin diseases liquid nitrogen or argon directly applied to specific areas of the skin. In the case of different neoplasms located in the deep layers of the skin or internal organs, the substance is administered by means of special devices and methods for medical imaging.
Living tissue, healthy or sick, can not tolerate very low temperatures and is killed as a result of:
- Freezing liquid outside the cells, resulting in dehydration of the cells;
- The formation of ice inside the cells. At a temperature of -40C or below contained in the cells of liquids formed ice crystals, which destroy virtually any cell;
- Rupture the cell as a result of pressure from within the ice, or by reducing the size of the cells caused by lack of water;
- Disorders of blood flow. Cells die when the flow of blood to them is limited to ice formed within the thin blood vessels of the tumor. Blood greatly thickened, and the tissue cells constituting the tumor are killed.
Because cryotherapy consists of a series of steps leading to cell death, usually several times a tumor is frozen and thawed. In most cases, two freeze-thaw cycle. After the death of the cells white blood cells cleanse the body from the remains of dead tissue.
The procedure
Typically, during a session of cryotherapy patient lies on a table. If you are using a local cryotherapy, freezing agent is applied to the skin with a cotton swab
How to use sanitary pad - basic precautions
or spray. In the treatment of more or less deep into the skin tumors injected a thin hollow needle, the movement of which is controlled by means of ultrasound or other imaging techniques. During the procedure, special devices monitor the heart rate and the pressure of the patient. Before starting the procedure, the patient is given a sedative; cryotherapy is sometimes performed under general anesthesia.
At the end of the device through which the liquid is introduced into the tumor nitrogen or argon, is camera that allows not only to enter the correct medication and monitor its operation - it eats, visible as frozen cells.
Sometimes, in order to freeze the tumor, the drug must be entered several times. For example, in the treatment of cancer
Cancer Treatment - difficult, but necessary
prostate requires six to eight injections.