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"Ultimate Survivor” Receives New Barrx Treatment
February 1, 2008
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Barrx System Treats Barrett’s Esophagus and Esophageal Cancer with Ease, Accuracy
(Washington, DC)- When Cyla Kinori was told she had esophageal cancer, she wasn’t scared of what the future held for her. This was not the first time the 85-year-old woman from Rockville, MD faced death. Cyla spent two years in several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, during World War II. Now, for this latest challenge, she would receive a brand new treatment called Barrx.
The Barrx treatment is conducted similarly to that of an endoscopy. A long flexible tube is inserted into the mouth and down the esophagus while the patient is heavily sedated. Guided by the camera at the end, the Barrx endoscope has a balloon lined with heat coils near the end of the tube. When the balloon is lined up next to the diseased tissue, the doctor inflates the balloon and activates the heat coils to burn away the diseased cells.
“I wasn’t scared. Whatever has to happen will happen,” said Cyla with a shrug about finding out she had cancer. “If I survived through the Holocaust, I could survive this.”
“Mrs. Kinori had a very early stage of esophageal cancer when she came to me,” said John Carroll, MD, Gastroenterology. “The standard would have been to send her to surgery, but with her advanced age, that would have been too much for her to handle.”
Earlier, Cyla had two minimally invasive procedures to treat her esophageal cancer at Georgetown. But at her three-month check-up, she still showed signs of left over cancer cells and that is when Dr. Carroll decided to use the new Barrx treatment.
“Barrx is completely painless and requires little to no recovery time,” said Dr. Carroll.
Born in Poland in 1922, Cyla grew up like most other young women in Europe. But when the Germans invaded Poland, she was forced to live in the ghettos created by the Nazis throughout the country. Two years later, she was moved, along with the rest of the Polish Jewish community, to the concentration camps. Cyla first ended up in the Majdanek concentration camp, was moved around a few times and eventually ended up in Auschwitz.
More than 60 years later, Cyla went to see her doctor because of a chronic stomachache. While having an endoscopy, her doctor noticed the small node in her esophagus. That’s when the biopsy came back revealing cancer.
Dr. Carroll said that following her Barrx treatment Cyla should be cancer free.
“It was especially rewarding to be able to potentially cure someone like Mrs. Kinori, who is older and has lived through so much already. We are preventing a horrible disease from progressing any further. She is truly the ultimate survivor.”
Media Contact: Marianne Worley
202-444-4659
mw32@georgetown.edu
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