ibs.GRANADA participates in a multicenter study to promote interventional radiology as a curative treatment for liver cancer
The RETA Spain Cooperative Group (CRETAS) is made up of five Spanish hospitals with experience in hepatic radioembolization.
This collaboration seeks to improve the quality of life of patients with liver cancer, promote research in the field and develop predictive models of Artificial Intelligence
The ibs.GRANADA participates in this study, which aims to consolidate interventional radiology as an alternative to surgery for patients with liver cancer. Likewise, the pooling of all their cases, in this specific pathology, could allow this group of scientists from 5 Spanish hospitals to become a benchmark and opt for large research projects, as well as participate in large-scale clinical trials .
The RETA Spain Cooperative group (CRETAS) is made up of the Biosanitary Research Institute of Granada (ibs.GRANADA), the La Fe Health Research Institute (IIS La Fe), ), the Foundation for Biosanitary Research and Innovation of the Principality of Asturias (FINBA), the Murcian Institute of Biosanitary Research (BIMIB) and the Institute of Health Sciences Studies Foundation of Castilla y León (ICSCYL).
The initial objective of this collaboration network is to work in a homogeneous way to achieve optimal results in procedures related to interventional radiology. Thus, the CRETAS network will begin its journey working with a single procedure such as liver radioembolization. Radioembolization is a minimally invasive procedure that combines embolization and radiation therapy to treat liver cancer by placing particles with local radiation therapy inside the arteries that feed the tumor. This is a technique that could help extend life and improve the quality of life of patients with this type of tumor.
Benefits of the collaborative network
The benefits of the creation of the RETA Spain Cooperative group (CRETAS) will not only be limited to advances in radioembolization and biomedical imaging techniques. In addition to generating a network that allows improving the quality of life of patients and advancing in new curative treatments, it will also involve close collaboration between those health and research centers that are part of it. Thus, all the professionals of the centers linked to CRETA will be able to carry out exchanges to share impressions, knowledge, work methods and even temporary stays in the centers that make up the network.
On the other hand, the first phase also includes the creation of a centralized repository where the data of all the cases treated with radioembolization will be housed and whose headquarters are located on a UPV server where the Hospital Universitario y Politécnico La Fe, which will be guarantors of its proper functioning. To guarantee the success of this data collection, a detailed protocol has been established that all participating hospitals must follow so that the data is stored in a homogeneous and secure manner.
Thus, with an image base as a whole and the experience of participating in European projects and in other trials, thanks to this project, it will be possible to improve the technique, use Artificial Intelligence and, therefore, establish predictive models to help clinical decision and optimize the radioembolization technique with the sole objective of improving the quality of patient care.
First meeting of the CRETAS network
After a year of work to achieve the constitution of CRETAS, on June 23 all the institutions that are part of this collaboration network will meet, in person, in Madrid to start their activity as a group. It is the starting point of a great project that has been in the making for years and that, with the signature of all the participating entities, has become a reality.
It should be noted that, despite the fact that the network is initially made up of five hospitals, the aim is to include new centers that wish, in the future, to form part of this project that seeks to improve the quality of life of patients, thanks to the improvement of treatments and the search for excellence.