Silicone oil to reflect radiation: Find a way "revolutionary" to treat cancer of the eye without losing vision

Find a way "revolutionary" to treat cancer of the eye without losing vision
http://thechemistrysideoftheforce.blogspot.com/

* The required eye cancer radiation treatment that causes permanent blindness in half of patients who receive it.
* Injecting silicone oil into the eye can block up to 55% of harmful radiation and prevent blindness.
* This type of cancer can develop in people of any age.

Eye Study

Rare and devastating eye cancer requires radiation treatment that causes permanent blindness in half of patients who receive it. However, assistant professor of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Colorado (USA) Scott Oliver has discovered a new method that could avoid this serious side effect.

In a study published in the journal Archives of Ophthalmology, Oliver describes how injecting silicone oil into the eye can block up to 55% of harmful radiation used to treat cancer and prevent blindness in most patients .

Oliver focused on the study of uveal melanoma, the most common and dangerous form of eye cancer that affects about 2,000 people each year worldwide. This tumor can spread rapidly to the liver and lungs, making it lethal.

This type of cancer may develop in people of all ages. The white skin and excessive sun exposure tend to be the main triggers. In recent years, oncologists have begun to use the introduction of brachytherapy, radioactive seeds into the eye-to cure this disease.

However, radiation therapy remains the most common form of treatment for this eye cancer as a treatment of a single week burn the tumor is achieved, albeit with serious long-term. "The radiation damages the blood vessels and nerves in the back of the eye, resulting in that, for the three years, more than half of the patients is blind," says the study.

Silicone oil to reflect radiation

In this regard, silicone oil, commonly used to treat retinal detachment, may reflect the majority of this radiation, preventing ocular cell death. According to this expert says, "one does not reflect more of radiation because the back of the eye is able to tolerate it in small doses."

Oliver saw the effects of this oil and animal corpses and says his next goal is to "steer the project to a clinical study in humans." "So far the eye could be saved with radiation, but the vision remained at only half the cases. With this treatment can make things much better in the future," he says.