Purpose: Spherical porous gelatin particles (Gelpart(®), Nippon Kayaku, Tokyo) were crushed by a pumping method to create small gelatin particles for transarterial chemoembolization of hepatocellular carcinoma. The aim of this study was to analyze crushed particle size.
Materials and methods: To minimize the size of crushed particles, we used the pumping method using two 2.5-mL syringes connected by a 3-way stopcock. Sixteen samples created by 3 operators were examined. The crushed particles were stained with hematoxylin-eosin, images magnified by a microscope were captured using a digital camera, and the maximum length of each particle was measured. The differences in particle size within the same operator and among the 3 operators were examined by an ANOVA test.
Results: The particle sizes created by each operator were 139.0 ± 58.8, 201.1 ± 90.9, and 158.4 ± 72.0 µm, respectively. There was a statistically significant difference in particle size among the 3 operators (p < 0.01). With one operator, there was no statistically significant difference in the particle size among the 4 samples (p = 0.93). With 2 operators, there were statistically significant differences among 5, or 7 samples, respectively (p < 0.01).
Conclusion: Small gelatin particles can be created with Gelpart(®) by the pumping method, but mean particle size was different among samples and not reproducible.
Keywords: Gelatin particle; Hepatocellular carcinoma; Pumping method; TACE.