The cryotherapy technique is growing rapidly, especially for treating small cancer tumors.

Developed at the Saint-Louis Hospital by Professor Eric Kerviler, cryotherapy is a minimally invasive interventional radiology technology that uses extreme cold to destroy cancer tumors or diseased tissues and treat pain.

If medicine has long used cold to treat external abnormalities – to destroy skin tumors or suspicious moles for example – its application within the body is more recent. The progress of imaging systems and the improvement of extreme temperature control were key in allowing doctors to use this technique in prostate, liver and cervical cancer treatment. Cold is now used as much as hot in the treatment of some arrhythmias and is increasingly used to treat certain types of tumors, especially when surgery is not an option.

Cryotherapy is based on the idea of inserting one or more needles with liquid nitrogen or argon inside the tumor or diseased tissue. These needles, displayed by imaging systems such as CT or ultrasound, bring the temperature down to -40°C. Ice is then formed at their ends, covering and freezing the tumor or tissue. The imaging system allows real-time monitoring of the tumor removal procedure and the treatment alternates between cooling and slow warming phases.

This minimally invasive technique has a lot of benefits: it reduces the length of the hospital stay as well as the recovery time for cancer patients, compared with the traditional major surgery. However risks remain, especially considering that the cold destroys all the cells that it reaches, healthy or not. The skill of the physician and the tools that enable him to monitor this complex procedure are key.

Cryotherapy remains new and the practitioners use it mostly on cases that are non-eligible to other treatments. It remains considered as an “experimental” treatment – numerous insurance companies refuse to cover it – and its cost is still high.

Hopes, however, are high too and research keeps improving. Researchers are working on exploring the potential of this technique to treat bone, brain, kidney, pulmonary or spinal tumors; it might as well one day be used to reduce benign breast cancer.

Today in France, around 15 centers already use this advanced technology.