Among the most feared diagnoses in medicine, pancreatic cancer has long carried a particular cruelty: even when confined to its origin, it so often wraps itself around the body's vital vessels that surgery — the only real path to survival — becomes impossible. At UCI Health in Orange County, California, a small but telling trial is testing whether light itself might untangle that knot, using a laser-activated drug to destroy tumors that have made themselves unreachable, and in doing so, returning a surgical option to patients who had none. Three of the first six enrolled have reached surgery w
UCI Health trials laser therapy to shrink inoperable pancreatic tumors before surgery
Six pancreatic cancer patients with previously inoperable tumors enrolled in the trial; three achieved no evidence of cancer at surgical margins.