Hepatic Arterial Pumps
Some patients with metastatic colon cancer (cancer that has spread to other areas), may benefit and gain long-term survival with excellent quality of life from liver resections; other patients may benefit from hepatic arterial pumps. These pumps bring chemotherapy drugs directly to the liver. This treatment is often better than the more traditional chemotherapy given by intravenous injection. In fact, chemotherapy given directly into the artery that feeds the tumor is more likely to kill the tumor cells as the drug concentrates in the tumor without spreading in the patient’s body. This avoids all the side effects (nausea, hair loss) which are common with more traditional intravenous chemotherapy.

The patient is placed under anesthesia while surgeons place a special tube (a catheter) in the hepatic artery, one of the liver’s main arteries. A pump is then implanted just under the patient’s skin and connected to the tube. Once a month, the pump is filled with a chemotherapy drug.