Treatment

Treating carcinoid syndrome involves treating your cancer and may also involve using medications to control your specific signs and symptoms.

Treatments may include:

• Surgery. Surgery to remove your cancer or most of your cancer may be an option.
• Medications to block cancer cells from secreting chemicals. Injections of the medications octreotide (Sandostatin) and lanreotide (Somatuline Depot) may reduce the signs and symptoms of carcinoid syndrome, including skin flushing and diarrhea. A drug called telotristat (Xermelo) can be combined with these drugs to control diarrhea caused by carcinoid syndrome.
• Drugs that deliver radiation directly to the cancer cells. Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) combines a drug that seeks out cancer cells with a radioactive substance that kills them. In PRRT for carcinoid tumors, the drug is injected into your body, where it travels to the cancer cells, binds to the cells and delivers the radiation directly to them. This therapy is used in people who have advanced cancer that hasn't responded to other treatments.
• Stopping blood supply to liver tumors. In a procedure called hepatic artery embolization, a doctor inserts a catheter through a needle near your groin and threads it up to the main artery that carries blood to your liver (hepatic artery). The doctor injects particles designed to clog the hepatic artery, cutting off the blood supply to cancer cells that have spread to the liver. The healthy liver cells survive by relying on blood from other blood vessels.
• Killing cancer cells in the liver with heat or cold. Radiofrequency ablation delivers heat through a needle to the cancer cells in the liver, causing the cells to die. Cryotherapy is similar, but it works by freezing the tumor.
• Chemotherapy. Chemotherapy uses strong drugs to kill cancer cells. Chemotherapy drugs can be given through a vein (intravenously) or in pill form, or both methods can be used.