Russian doctors set world record for removing metastases

Doctors at Russia’s leading cancer treatment medical center have successfully removed 170 metastases from a 37-year-old male patient’s lungs in six surgeries that each lasted several hours, the clinic’s press service said.

Metastases arise when cancer spreads from a primary site and new tumors are formed in distant organs. Most cancer deaths are caused by metastasis rather than from the primary tumors.

“There are no analogues in the world oncology for this case,” according to a statement from the N.N. Petrov National Medical Research Center of Oncology on Tuesday.

The St. Petersburg-based oncology center is one of the largest diagnostic and treatment centers in Russia providing care to cancer patients.

According to the report, the patient was admitted to the center with multiple metastases in the lungs, which were the result of osteosarcoma that he was diagnosed with in 2020.

Over the course of four years, he underwent chemotherapy in Moscow, followed by the removal of a tumor along with part of his shoulder, and several more courses of chemotherapy in Germany. As a result, the growth of the lesions was stopped. However, according to the protocols in Germany, doctors would remove no more than 10-15 metastases during a single surgery.

“Removing, for example, 30 or 50 metastases from the lower lobe of the lung is a big trauma for the body on its own, and it was critical to give [the patient] time to recover,” said Yevgeny Levchenko, the head of department of thoracic oncology at N.N. Petrov NMRC, explaining that this was why the removals were done over six separate surgeries.

Three of the surgeries were performed using the method of “isolated chemoperfusion” — the Russian medical center’s modernized and patented technique, which can save patients even with the most severe Stage 4 cancer. The method makes it possible to remove the smallest metastases of the lung tissue, thus eliminating the possibility of new metastases appearing in the lungs.

Ultimately, the patient’s prognosis is now “most optimistic,” Levchenko said.

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