HOUSTON – More than 40,000 people will be told they have liver cancer this year. It’s considered the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide.
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Traditional liver tumor treatments include surgery, chemo, and radiation. Now, doctors have a new tool in their toolbox to fight it, with a procedure called histotripsy. Histotripsy is currently available in Texas at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
For this report, Dr. Eric Liu a Neuroendocrine Surgeon at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center explained to Ivanhoe Broadcast News, how the procedure works.
“It’s a technique in which we can fire very, very high-powered ultrasound beams into the liver and we can actually dissolve the tumors directly without having to cut them open,” said Dr. Liu.
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Histotripsy uses 52 beams of ultrasound and can focus on a target as small as a BB.
“Do you remember when we were kids? And you could take a magnifying glass, and you could burn a leaf right on that one spot” Dr. Liu said. “We can do the same thing now for tumors in the liver.”
The tumor is liquified and destroyed on the spot! Then the body will rid itself of the liquid left behind.
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Unlike radiation, histotripsy does not impact the surrounding tissue and organs.
“The radiation can really damage a lot of the neighbors,” Dr. Liu said. The innocent bystanders nearby. Histotripsy is not like that.”
Right now, it is only approved for liver tumors, but as technology advances, Dr. Liu hopes they will be able to use it on many more, if not all, types of tumors.
