Photodynamic therapy (PDT)
Peter de Valença often thinks how lucky he has been. “If I had developed tongue cancer a few years earlier, the therapy would not have been available,” he says. “Then I couldn’t have told this story.”
In 2004 he felt a lump in his neck. It turned out to be a metastasis of a tumor on his tongue. After radiation with radiotherapy, the tumor appeared to have disappeared. But a year later, the cancer was back in the same spot. The only option left was to have his tongue removed. “Never,” was his response. The idea of not being able to talk any longer frightened him. “As if I would be locked inside myself.”
He had read that tumors are sometimes treated with photodynamic therapy (PDT), a radiation technique with laser light. “Why don’t you try that treatment?” he asked his doctors. They referred him to Bing Tan, head and neck surgeon at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital in Amsterdam.
laser light
“Normally we only use PDT for superficial tumors in the head and neck area,” explains surgeon Tan. “However, Mr De Valença’s tumor was deep in his tongue. We then irradiated the affected tissue with laser light from the inside with an experimental treatment through small tubes in the cancerous tumor.”
Peter de Valença underwent the therapy in 2005. It was not easy. “For the first few weeks I couldn’t eat normally, so I got food through a tube in my stomach. And because the right half of my tongue has been paralyzed by the procedure, I have permanent difficulties with chewing, swallowing and talking. But at least I still have my tongue!”
cancer free
Before he got cancer, he loved good food. “My wife allowed me to lose a few pounds.” Since then, he has lost a lot of weight and has made significant changes to his menu. “I really had to learn to eat again. I could hardly eat meat for a long time, but now a tender, grilled piece tastes like me again. I have also found a few types of bread that I can eat well. I enjoy things like that more now than before I got sick. Lasagna has really turned out to be a godsend: easy to chew and swallow, and delicious too.”
De Valença has now been cancer-free for five years. Not only himself, but also his doctor is overjoyed. Bing Tan: “I hope that success stories like this will lead to more research being done into the application of this technique in other cancers.”
New start
Peter de Valença has meanwhile resumed his work as a software developer and is fully participating in normal life again. “My son recently graduated as a physicist”, he says proudly. “During the graduation ceremony I thought: how wonderful that I can experience this! All thanks to the therapy.”
Photodynamic therapy (PDT)
In photodynamic therapy, a light-sensitive substance is injected into the body, which also penetrates the tumor. The cancerous tumor is then irradiated with laser light. The blood vessels in the cancerous tumor then close, so that the tumor no longer receives oxygen and eventually dies.
Every year in the Netherlands about 2600 people are affected by cancer in the head and neck area (excluding the brain). Of the patients whose cancer comes back after treatment, about 1200 per year, a quarter are eligible for some form of PDT. Of those patients who have finished treatment, 50 percent are still alive after one year. The experimental form of PDT that Peter de Valença has undergone is performed only a few times a year.
Sources):
- Plus Magazine
