The Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, recently became the first site in California to offer the SAVI advanced breast cancer Treatment.
“It looks like a wire whisk ” in fact, each one of those struts you can load with radioactive radiation seed,” said Catheryn Yashar, assistant professor and chief of Breast and Gynecological Services in the UCSD Department of Radiation Oncology. “The reason that is important and makes SAVI different is the amount of time that radiation seed sits in each one of those struts changes the dose, and so you can basically form the dose to each patient’s anatomy.”
The new SAVI design, which is a single-entry, multi-catheter applicator that delivers partial breast irradiation, treats the tissue surrounding the lumpectomy cavity and can actually decrease the time the radiation sits near the skin and thus avoid skin toxicity.
“It is really for early-stage breast cancer, so it has to be a tumor that is invasive 3 centimeters or less or a non-invasive tumor, and I don’t put it in patients who have positive nodes under their arms,” she said. “The national trial looking at breast cancer allows patients with positive nodes but I have not treated those patients with SAVI yet.”
Breast conservation therapy includes lumpectomy, the surgical removal of the cancerous tissue within the breast as well tissue surrounding it, typically followed by radiation. Standard radiation treatment usually takes six weeks of daily treatment, but the SAVI device only takes one week and so it significantly reduces a patient’s time commitment.
BioLucent Inc., a California-based women’s health company committed to early detection and treatment of breast cancer, launched the SAVI device last fall and received FDA approval in October. Arizona Oncology Services became the first medical facility to use the device and UCSD is the second.
“We are thinking about opening a national trial ” possibly to compare it the other forms of partial breast radiation therapy ” but it is just in discussion mode right now,” Yashar said. “The people that we have treated with it have been very happy about the results and have offered to help spread the word about the SAVI device to other patients.”
For more information, visit www.ucsd.edu.