New breast cancer treatment trials offer hope for surgery-free cure in Buffalo

Dr. Stuti Tambar is a breast surgical oncologist with UBMD Surgery, General Physician, PC and Kaleida Health. She's leading part of a national clinical trial in Buffalo to see if radial ablation — laser technology that burns tumors — can cure cancer getting rid of the need for surgery.

"These are procedures that I do in my office under local anesthesia. Patients are completely awake. It's a 15-minute procedure, and their tumor is at least in theory burned, and they no longer need surgery," Dr. Tambar said.

Right now, this is only for women with non-aggressive breast cancer and small tumors.

"It would be revolutionary, to be honest, because right now, all breast cancer patients are recommended to undergo surgery, and there are many women who are not able to undergo surgery because of age, because of other medical diagnoses, or for any reason that they're not able to undergo surgery, and these women are put on palliative treatment, medications to basically live with their cancer," Dr. Tambar said.

Dr. Tambar will monitor the women for a few years to see if the cancer comes back and compare that data to the outcomes for patients who just have surgery.

"They're excited, I mean, right now we are doing a trial where patients, after having their tumor radial ablated, they still need surgery to prove that their cancer was actually entirely killed from this treatment, but once this takes over and is cleared by the national agencies, we're able to offer this as the primary and only treatment, and remove the need for surgery afterwards," Dr. Tambar said.

They are still looking for more women to be in the trial. Tumors have to be less than a centimeter-and-a-half and non-aggressive.

People interested in this trial can contact the office of clinical research at 716-529-6470.