A letter praising Drs. Watts and Wilson addressed to Max Rosen, MD, MPH, UMMS radiology chair.
Hi Max,
I am a little late in sending this, but I just really wanted to commend the compassionate patient care and wonderful teamwork provided to one of our cancer patients by Drs. Chip Watts and Sean Wilson.
As you are likely aware, Chip and I (primarily Chip – I just find the patients for him) have started a program here for minimally invasive CT-guided radiofrequency ablation and cement osteoplasty for patients with bony tumors of the pelvis and extremities. We recently had a patient, a long time primary care doctor in the North County, who developed metastatic renal cell cancer, with a very painful supra-acetabular bone metastasis that was limiting his ambulatory function and quality of life. I had discussed complex surgical options with him, but he also had lung metastases as well as chronic pneumonitis from prior immunotherapy, which made considering large invasive surgery very challenging and risky. We tried radiation with TJ, but his symptoms persisted and his disease progressed. He was realistic about his prognosis, but was hoping to have less pain, and regain the ability to walk some. So I talked to Chip about CT-guided RFA and cement osteoplasty. Given that RCC can be very vascular, we asked Sean to consider pre-procedural tumor embolization to potentially decrease blood loss.
Sean Wilson, MD
Chip and Sean coordinated to get the patient in for the procedure in less than a week, including coordinating with anesthesia. They were also able to coordinate doing both the embolization and the RFA/cement in the IR suite, using the XperGuide technology, so the patient didn’t have to be moved from IR to CT in the middle of the procedure while under anesthesia. The procedure went very well, and the patient did get significant improvement in his pain for a while, even able to discontinue opioid pain meds for a while. Unfortunately, he was at this point fairly debilitated and deconditioned, and never regained his ability to walk before he passed away from his disease about a month after the procedure.
I just wanted to recognize both Chip and Sean for their efforts in the care of this patient.
Thanks
Matt
Mathew J. Most, MD, FAAOS
Chief, Division of Orthopaedic Oncology
Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopedics and Physical Rehabilitation
Assistant Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology
