Chlorhexidine Kills Remaining Bone Cancer Cells Post Surgery

The commonly used disinfectant chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) is the most efficient irrigation solution for use during surgical treatment of bone cancer. A collaboration between Wolters Kluwer and Lippincott results in the publication of the journal. sentence is not correct -which journal? Collaboration between these companies? According to a laboratory study by Matthew J. Thompson, MD, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues, a 0.05% CHG solution appeared to be the most successful of all the solutions used to eradicate leftover tumor cells following surgery, in eliminating cultured bone tumor cells.

Chlorhexidine for Post-Surgical Treatment of Bone Cancer

Some patients with bone malignancies undergo a surgical treatment called intralesional curettage. The tumor is removed during this treatment while trying to keep as much healthy bone as feasible. Irrigating the surgical area of the bone with a chemical solution is a typical adjuvant therapy. The goal of this irrigation is to eliminate any leftover cells that could cause a recurrence or reseed of the tumor.

Saline, ethanol, and other disinfectants have all been applied to the tumor bed as irrigation solutions. To find out which of these solutions have the most cytotoxic (cell-killing) effects against bone tumor cells, Dr. Thompson and his associates conducted a series of studies.

Giant cell tumor, a benign but aggressive tumor, and chondrosarcoma, a kind of bone cancer, were employed as cultures in the research. Six different solutions – sterile water, 0.9% saline, 70% ethanol, 3% hydrogen peroxide, 0.05% CHG, and 0.3% povidone-iodine – were used to treat tumor cell cultures.

Only CHG out of the six treatments showed cell-killing efficiency comparable to a control solution with 100% cytotoxicity, and this result was shown regardless of the length of the treatment (i.e., 2 minutes or 5 minutes).

None of the other treatments came close to CHG's capacity to kill cells. Only two solutions- sterile water and hydrogen peroxide - outperformed a low-cytotoxicity control treatment. Saline, ethanol, and povidone-iodine, the other three solutions that were examined, displayed minimal to no cytotoxicity.

Medicinal Uses of Chlorhexidine

A well-known disinfectant with several medicinal applications, including as a topical antiseptic treatment before surgery. In comparison to certain currently utilized drugs, the researchers state that “CHG is routinely used and easily accessible, with shown in vivo safety in other surgical applications.”

Advertisement

The latest research demonstrates that, at least in lab settings, CHG is extremely successful at eliminating bone tumor cells. “Therefore, the use of a 0.05% CHG solution clinically could serve as a potential chemical adjuvant during intralesional curettage of chondrosarcoma and giant cell tumors,” Dr. Thompson and coauthors concluded.

The researchers stress that additional research will be required to assess the effectiveness of CHG irrigation in surgical patients. Dr. Thompson commented, “We believe it is important to continue to explore better ways to achieve durable local control of benign aggressive tumors like giant cell tumor of bone, which are associated with a high risk of local recurrence when treated with conventional extended intralesional curettage.”

Advertisement

Source-Medindia