A renewed hope for cancer treatment
Electrochemotherapy is an innovative treatment for cancer in pets.
It consists of exposing cancer cells to local, short and intense electrical pulses.
The electrical fields that are applied activate pores in the membrane of diseased cells, destabilizing them and leaving them more susceptible to the introduction and action of chemotherapeutic drugs, so the combination of both treatments allows for greater efficacy.
Electrochemotherapy is a control technique at the local level, it only acts in the area where it is applied, so it does not produce systemic side effects in the patient.
In turn, being a local treatment, it is used in cutaneous or subcutaneous tumors where surgery is not a valuable option, or as neoadjuvant therapy to reduce tumor size and make surgery possible. In some cases, when surgery has been performed, it can also be used on the scar to decrease the probability of tumor recurrence and increase the disease-free interval.
Regarding the types of tumors that we treat with this technique, they are most frequently squamous cell carcinoma. This type of neoplasia is a tumor that develops in the epidermis and has a great capacity for local invasion and less metastatic capacity at a general level.
Other tumors in which electrochemotherapy is being used as a single therapy or as part of a combined treatment are melanomas, low-grade sarcomas, or mast cell tumors.
It is important to note that electrochemotherapy is a specialized medical procedure that must be performed by trained professionals at veterinary oncology centers. The treatment is individually adapted to each specific case of each patient and must be reviewed to assess the need for a single session or multiple sessions.
