New innovation for advanced cancers available at Roswell Park
Advancements in medical technology are redefining survivorship for people with cancer that has spread to the liver, or with a primary cancer within the liver. Just ask Lynn Smith, the third person, and first female, to receive hepatic artery infusion at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Hepatic artery infusion (HAI), is a type of regional chemotherapy that implants a small pump about the size of a hockey puck in the body to deliver and control chemotherapy directly to the liver, so the drugs don’t need to circulate throughout the body. This allows the doctor to use higher doses of powerful chemotherapy drugs to treat your cancer without toxicity or side effects.
“I wish they could do that for every cancer because I had no side effects,” the Jamestown, NY native says.
Lynn was initially diagnosed with colorectal cancer in December 2023 and had eight rounds of chemotherapy at Roswell Park’s Care Network location in Jamestown. When her care team determined the cancer had spread to her liver, her oncologist, Jairius Ibaboa, MD, Medical Director at the Jamestown site, recommended hepatic artery infusion. The novel therapy is available at only two facilities in the region: in Pittsburgh or at Roswell Park in Buffalo. Lynn decided on Roswell Park, where surgical oncologist Leonid Cherkassky, MD, and medical oncologist Anuradha Krishnamurthy, MD provided her care.
“I was so glad that I chose Roswell Park,” she says. “I love Dr. Cherkassky. He’s concerned about his patients. He keeps in touch with you. He explains.”
Preparing for hepatic artery infusion
Most of Lynn’s metastases were on the right lobe of her liver. Dr. Cherkassy’s treatment plan was to ablate (remove) two tiny tumors on the left lobe before surgically implanting the liver pump. Once placed, a small tube leading from the pump into the blood vessel connects to the hepatic artery – the major blood vessel that carries blood to the liver.
Lynn describes the wireless pump as a “miniature flying saucer,“ adding that she only had to stay overnight in the hospital after it was inserted. “The surgery was minimal. I had no issues from the surgery,” she says. “It’s just a wonderful way to deal with cancer. You can feel the pump, but it doesn’t show.”
She continued treatment for several months with the pump, alternating every two weeks between chemotherapy and a heparin/saline solution, before having a portal vein embolization to block blood to the right lobe of her liver. This forced her ablated left lobe to regrow and become healthy enough to take over the function of the failing right one — and to support the liver pump.
“They use the same chemotherapy that they used systemically before the pump. And the pump has to stay moist. It can’t dry out. They access it through a needle to flush it,” she explains, comparing accessing it to a typical chemotherapy port. “It works extremely well. And when you don’t have any side effects, you can live your life normally. That’s a huge blessing.”
The liver pump innovation allows the doctor to deliver an ongoing powerful dose of chemotherapy straight to the liver, a treatment option that can prolong life and, in some cases, achieve a cure. First used 10 to 15 years ago, it is now a standard of cancer care under the guidelines of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, of which Roswell Park is a member.
Moving forward cancer-free
Lynn’s pump is targeted to stay in for the next two years, the standard length of time. But she is doing well and currently only needs to return to Roswell Park every three months for its maintenance. “I have no cancer right now in my body,” she reports happily, a Baby Boomer who laughs that she has to remind herself she is no longer 25. “In two years, if it looks like this is not going to happen again, they’ll take the pump out.”
She can’t say enough about the healing experience she has had with Roswell Park — both in Jamestown and in Buffalo — and wants everyone to “give Roswell a chance.”
“Everybody here has been wonderful. The nurses who do the infusions, they know you by name,” says Lynn. “I have been so blessed through all of this. Every stage went well. I always feel God puts the right people in the right place at the right time.”
You have time for a second opinion
We offer cutting edge, innovative treatments that are unavailable elsewhere, even for patients who have been told their liver metastases are unresectable or inoperable.
Editor’s Note: Cancer patient outcomes and experiences may vary, even for those with the same type of cancer. An individual patient’s story should not be used as a prediction of how another patient will respond to treatment. Roswell Park is transparent about the survival rates of our patients as compared to national standards, and provides this information, when available, within the cancer type sections of this website.
