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Children with eye cancer are being offered a new treatment that could save their sight.
The procedure, which has been given to 12 children at Great Ormond Street Hospital, allows doctors to target tumours with chemotherapy drugs while avoiding healthy tissues.
Patients avoid side-effects such as sickness, hair loss and suppression of the immune system because as little as five per cent of the amount given in standard chemotherapy is administered.
The method is far more effective than the conventional, body-wide treatment because more of the drug is directed to the site of the tumour. The technique, called intra-arterial chemotherapy, works by passing a catheter from an incision in the groin to the ophthalmic artery, which supplies the eye with blood. Medicine is administered via the catheter.
The procedure takes about an hour under general anaesthetic.
Stefan Brew, a consultant neuroradiologist at Great Ormond Street, said: "The advantage is that if you can deliver the entire dose to where the tumour is, you get a high dose to the tumour and low dose to other tissues.
"The logic is to deliver the chemotherapy in a targeted way, rather than the blunderbuss approach."
