Thought cryotherapy could only be used to treat sore muscles and joints? Think again. In addition to detoxifying, soothing sore joints, easing chronic pain, and improving your skin, cryotherapy is taking health and wellness to a whole new level.
It’s is now being used to treat cancer. The treatment is referred to as cryosurgery and is used to treat both external and internal tumors. Cryosurgery employs the same methods as cryotherapy. It uses nitrogen gas inserted through cryoprobes at sub zero temperatures to freeze tumors. Freezing cancerous cells can prevent damage to healthy tissue and also aids in the regeneration of healthy, cancer free cells.
Cryosurgery has certainly worked for Bob Greeness, a healthy 67 year old man who suddenly discovered he had stage IV kidney cancer. While the survival rate for kidney cancer is normally under 10%, cryosurgery can dramatically increase the odds of survival. In Bob’s case argon gas was inserted directly into his kidney through a minimally invasive procedure. The tumor was frozen at a temperature of -40 degrees celsius, thawed, and then frozen again to ensure that any remaining cancerous tissue was destroyed completely. Three years after the procedure Bob says "I'm almost in better shape now than I was before".
Cryosurgery isn’t just limited to kidney cancer. It’s been using to treat a variety of cancers including prostate cancer, lung cancer, and skin cancer. And while it can sometimes cause side effects they are minimal in comparison to the side effects of surgery and radiation therapy. The advantages of cryosurgery heavily outweigh any of its potential side effects. It’s much less invasive than normal surgery, requiring only a tiny incision to insert the cryoprobe through which the argon gas is applied. Consequently this eliminates the usual side effects of surgery such as pain, bleeding, and complications. Cryosurgery requires little or no healing time and many patients are able to leave the hospital on the same day the surgery is performed. Because cryosurgery is so minimally invasive it can be used to treat patients who aren’t likely to respond well to surgery because of their age or health conditions.
Cryosurgery has an exciting and dynamic future ahead of it. With the high number of patients it has helped since its inception a short time ago it is likely to transform and innovate the future of cancer treatments.
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