Meet the Experts

Dr. Ignacio Rua

Chief of Vascular Surgery with Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute

Videos

Learning About Embolization

Embolization is when something travels from one part of the bloodstream to another. It means blocking off a blood vessel, Dr. Ignacio Rua, Chief of Vascular Surgery with Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute and Dr. Ripal Gandhi, Interventional Radiologist with Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute, agree. Dr. Gandhi also explains embolization is not only done for cancer. “It can be done for benign lesions as well, such as bleeding, aneurysms or benign tumors," he says.

Curing Liver Cancer

Physicians are always to be as minimally invasive as possible when treating any cancer, thinks Dr. Ignacio Rua, Chief of Vascular Surgery with Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute. He explains the procedure performed to Cristina, a liver cancer survivor. “We grow the uninvolved part of the heart liver that did not have tumor. We had to grow that part so then we could go in and safely remove almost 80% of her liver," he says.

Liver Cancer Treatment

Dr. Ignacio Rua, Chief of Vascular Surgery with Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute, considers there are a lot of great technologies that make liver cancer treatment either interventional or percutaneous. In surgery there are so many techniques now to help minimize blood loss, he says. Dr. Ripal Gandhi, Interventional Radiologist with Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute, adds for liver cancer, the first line treatment is surgery, embolization or ablation. In other cases, systemic chemotherapy is the first option.

Treating Cancer In The Future

Things are getting smaller, more and more minimally invasive and targeted therapies and immunotherapies are really a lot of the future. As we can target those liver tumors, we have the potential, and we can target other cancers as well. In the future other types of therapies may be offered in a personalized manner to different organs. Doctors Ignacio Rua, Chief of Vascular Surgery and Ripal Gandhi, Interventional Radiologist with Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute agree that the future will be better

Embolization Can Be Repeated

Procedures like embolization can be repeated with very minimal side effects and patients really have good results, affirms Dr. Ripal Gandhi, Interventional Radiologist with Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute. When physicians treat a patient, they are looking at three things: the extend of the patient's disease, the performance status and the patient's liver function. Then, the doctor thinks about the best treatment for the patient.

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