If you have any questions regarding this surgery please contact me at osoavicha1@aol.com
My son was Dx. With Alveolar Soft part sarcoma in Oct.2003 when he was 17. It was a very small (18 mm) lump in his right arm. Ultrasound was suspicious and he was referred for the surgery. Pathology report stated ASPS which is one of the rarest kinds of sarcoma at all – and sarcomas are only 1 % of all cancers. Then was the second surgery – re excision – done by the oncology surgeon to achieve clean margins, two muscles were removed and tendons reattached to preserve functionality. All efforts were done to ensure that there is no spread anymore as all the scans done before of the surgery were clear – no sign of the metastases everywhere. There are many cases when if sarcomas found early and properly removed then it may be a cure, no mets if it didn’t spread before. My dear boy was not the lucky one and in 3 month after the surgery the lung CT scan has shown a few small tiny mets. They were kept under the observation and scans were repeated every 3 month. At the beginning when the number was under 10 our local thoracic surgeon (very experienced and caring doctor) was optimistic reg. the possible resection but every new scan was bringing new mets with the number reaching 20 and in the summer 2004 he told us that there is nothing he can do as the pattern like that means that there are many more micro mets which are not seen on the CT scan under 2 mm and as they get bigger they get seen and since they are in all lobes of both lungs the resection is not possible. This sarcoma is chemoresistant and we were left with no options at all. ASPS is a slow growing (slow growing tumours are chemoresistant as chemo affects the fast dividing cells) but highly metastatic sarcoma so we were offered to enjoy every day with our son (helplessly watching as his lung mets grow). By then I was already reading all the information I can find all over the internet reg. lung metastases. My search became desperately intense, I already found out that only resection can prolong the life of the patient with the multiple lung mets but I needed to make it feasible. I did a “multiple lung metastases” search and Google returned about 2,000,000 links. I do not remember how may of them I have read but it was more then 500 I guess when I came across Dr.Rolle 2002 article” Lobe-sparing resection of multiple pulmonary metastases with a new 1318-nm Nd:YAG laser--first 100 patients”. I instantly knew that it was what I am looking for. I am a technical engineer by the education (measurement techniques and optics) and was able to appreciate the versatile idea how it works and also I know that German’s never lie and they are very passion about what they do. After reading all the literature I can find on laser assisted resection I was convinced that it is the less harmful and reliable way to have a resection and what more important - there was a chance to do it at all versus the usual conventional resection using mechanical stapler which is not possible to use on the deep seated mets – they need to resect a lobe in that case, but what if you need to resect all lobes?
So I found the contact info and sent an e-mail to Dr.Rolle, then the CT scan on a CD with the brief description of the situation.
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