[HN Gopher] Ultrasound is ushering a new era of surgery-free can...
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Ultrasound is ushering a new era of surgery-free cancer treatment
Author : 1659447091
Score : 349 points
Date : 2025-10-08 10:18 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| sho_hn wrote:
| How's progress on individualized cancer remedies based on mRNA?
| michaeljx wrote:
| Don't know about mRNA but individualized remedies based on
| CAR-T technology have been making significant strides in this
| area, with major commercialisation expected in the next 1-2
| years
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Once you've destroyed the tumor, how do you get it out of the
| body?
| Timsky wrote:
| Usually, it suffices to initiate apoptosis, the self-
| destruction mechanisms of the cells.
| elric wrote:
| I doubt ultrasound would trigger apoptosis in cancer cells,
| one of the reasons they're cancerous is that they refuse to
| commit suicide when they should.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| It heats them until enough damage is done that they die
| regardless.
| patall wrote:
| So more like necrosis, not apoptosis. Maybe non-
| biologists are not aware, but apoptosis is not just cell
| death.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Or just tears them apart in the case of Histosonics.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| The recycling of dead cells is a normal biological process the
| same thing happens when they use radiation to kill cancer cells
| elric wrote:
| If I interpret the article correctly, the ultrasound energy
| does two things: it effectively destroys the cancer cells by
| overheating them, and it physically breaks apart the tumour.
| Your immune system can further break up and get rid of dead
| cells the way it deals with normal dead cells.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Won't there still be some broken up live cells that can now
| migrate around the body and cause cancer in other areas?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This was an issue with uterine morcellation;
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morcellator. Per the article,
| though:
|
| > Some researchers have raised concerns about histotripsy
| potentially seeding new cancer growths as tumours are
| broken up inside the body, meaning they can be transported
| to other areas. That fear, however, hasn't borne out in
| animal studies so far.
| colmmacc wrote:
| https://www.statnews.com/2024/06/22/hank-green-pissing-out-c...
|
| Watching Hank Green's YouTube video where he found out that his
| cloudy pee was cancer leaving his body, he was surprised that
| doctors don't tell you to expect it. It can be such a morale
| boost.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I remember seeing a demo from people who could slap a raw steak
| into one of these machines, and with ultrasound, sear their logo
| into the meat at sub mm precision. But that was long ago & not
| ready for medical usage yet. Cool that it seems to be used for
| actually treating people now.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I just spoke to a oncologist surgeon about this. Even though
| their facially doesn't have one (they are expensive machines)
| he said it's looking like it'll be standard care in the future.
|
| He did an evaluation about getting one for my local hospital.
| owenthejumper wrote:
| This can also be used for prostate, it's nothing new. But you
| cannot use this anywhere where the ultrasound would be blocked by
| other organs.
|
| Fun fact: using this ultrasound for prostate cancer treatment
| reduces the risk of erectile disfunction
| ptsneves wrote:
| Can't the surgery be then with a small probe just to get the
| ultra sound tip near the cancer? I don't know the size of the
| ultrasound tip but seems to me it can be smaller then a hand or
| tweezers.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Often constructive and destructive interference of waves can
| be used to focus the ultrasound through tissue without any
| incisions at all. Kidney stones are sometimes broken up this
| way.
| mattkrisiloff wrote:
| See currentsurgical.com
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| > Fun fact: using this ultrasound for prostate cancer treatment
| reduces the risk of erectile disfunction
|
| I'm not aware of strong evidence in this area (not saying
| you're incorrect).
|
| For the liver indications, several elite radiology departments
| have had very poor outcomes with their patients, despite the
| strong public data. I would not, with my own prostate, try a
| new technology until at least a decade out, at least.
| owenthejumper wrote:
| Here is a trial (2022):
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35714666/
|
| And a review: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36686753/
| wlaw15 wrote:
| Urinary and erectile function are a major issue with partial
| and radical prostatectomy. These ultrasound treatments are
| showing significant improvements in both areas.
|
| This technology is also now used to treat non-cancerous
| prostate enlargement (BPH).
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| > Urinary and erectile function are a major issue with
| partial and radical prostatectomy
|
| There are other options besides prostatectomy or the
| untested histotripsy.
| wlaw15 wrote:
| True, but currently prostatectomy is the most common
| intervention and second is radiotherapy which as
| mentioned in a comment above is a very expensive
| alternative with known side effects.
|
| Histotripsy is early in its clinical life but I wouldn't
| say untested.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| I'm not sure why we're plugging a brand new entity when
| PAE is already in guidelines.
|
| People who aren't in medicine are very susceptible to
| advertising - this is why I'm writing so stridently
| sarchertech wrote:
| The article mentions that this is a different type of
| ultrasound treatment than the one that has been in use for
| prostate cancer treatment for some time.
| Veliladon wrote:
| >But you cannot use this anywhere where the ultrasound would be
| blocked by other organs.
|
| Yes you can. If you had an array of ultrasonic transducers
| around the body you could have each of them in phase targeting
| a single spot. Beamforming is a thing we've been doing for
| years with RF. It's even more trivial with sound.
| thechao wrote:
| We were privy to a lab that accidentally cooked mice with
| gold nanoparticles in the late 90s with multiple IR lasers.
| After they figured the power side, it turns out that gold
| nanoparticles are wildly cytotoxic on a number of axes.
| a11r wrote:
| https://house.fandom.com/wiki/Clueless
| fortran77 wrote:
| IN fact, they do this today to break up kidney stones.
| Multiple beams.
| dylan604 wrote:
| How is it more trivial with sound? Sound is just a wave just
| like ultrasound. In fact, ultrasound has the word sound in it
| making it sound. So your conclusion is not sound.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Reread, and you'll realize it means more trivial than RF.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Ugh, yes. Not sure how the wires got crossed like that.
| However, sound is just a wave while RF is also waves even
| if at higher frequencies. Just as ultrasound is higher
| frequency that audible sound (which I guess is how
| "sound" was being used). If you continue increasing the
| frequencies past the RF range you will eventually get
| into light.
|
| You just gotta catch the right wave
| hans_castorp wrote:
| Don't they break up kidney stones using ultrasound as well? Or is
| that a different type of "ultrasound"?
| herval wrote:
| "Lithotripsy" is the name of the kidney stone treatment. My
| understanding is it's based on vibration, not ultrasound (I
| know, vibration _is_ sound - my understanding is the method on
| the linked article uses higher frequency + intensity + shorter
| pulses than the kidney stone method - so sorta like microwaving
| tumors vs using a massage gun on kidney stones?)
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| I think parent is thinking of "Ultrasonic lithotripsy" which
| does use ultrasound.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I've had it, it's ultrasound but it's not always effective
| against hard stones.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I think that's traditionally done with lasers.
| bamboozled wrote:
| That's transurethral lithotripsy.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Having had kidney stones, they're both used. I think for
| the sonic one they put you in a water bath because it
| conducts better. But as I understand it, the docs can pick
| whichever one is more optimal, be it shattering the stone
| sonically or zapping it with a laser.
| billforsternz wrote:
| My surgeon told me my previous kidney cancer surgery
| (partial nephrectomy) meant my 7/8 size kidney wouldn't
| handle ultrasound treatment for the big kidney stone I'd
| developed 10 years after the cancer. So laser instead!
| Worked well but not much fun at the time.
| molszanski wrote:
| AFIKR two facilities do this kind of treatment. One in Canada
| and one in China. There already was a HN threads with some
| reporting to have been treated in Canada.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31630679
|
| Apparently, only some tumors have a distinct and unique shape /
| size. The "trick" is to calibrate the resonance exactly to the
| size of the cancer cell. So that resonance would "hurt" only
| that kind of shape / size cell. Which was much harder to do
| than it sounds. Sadly not all cancer cells are unique and not
| that "easily" distinguishable by size
|
| But I am not in the medical field and just repeating what I've
| read.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > "Cancer is awful," Xu says. "What's making it even worse is
| cancer treatment."
|
| Well said. And it's either terrible or expensive (and sometimes
| also terrible as well).
|
| Proton therapy for instance is amazing at targeting hard to reach
| tumors like those in the eye, but costs close to fix figures as
| it requires a team of people to design the treatment.
|
| For comparison, a liver histotripsy costs $17.5k:
|
| https://histosonics.com/news/histosonics-notches-significant...
|
| Not a bad deal for a non-invasive life-saving surgery.
| roadside_picnic wrote:
| An eye opener for me was when a friend of my was dying of
| cancer there was a period where he got sepsis, ultimately
| because of the effects of _chemotherapy_ not directly because
| of the cancer. But had he passed from sepsis (he survived that
| incident), the cause of death would ultimately be attributed to
| _cancer_ and not _chemotherapy_.
|
| I looked into it deeper at the time and it's very difficult to
| untangle the true cause of death in many of these situations.
| While certainly these treatments are ultimately beneficial
| statistically, it is concerning that there's not as much
| discussion around their harm and the real risk rewards behind
| various treatments. I know from my own (non-cancer) experience
| that there is a very strong bias towards _treatment_ even in
| cases where, once you break down all the risk and rewards,
| there is a strong argument for non-intervention.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| No one gets paid for non-intervention.
| hylaride wrote:
| I suspect the medical industry is so heavily regulated that
| it is very difficult for doctors to recommend non-treatment
| or risk being sued into oblivion, though maybe it depends on
| the country.
|
| Here in Canada, before assisted suicide was legalized, my
| grandfather (in his late 80s) refused any treatment for his
| kidney failure. He was ready to die and could barely walk or
| eat on his own anymore. There was a _wink wink_ situation
| where as the kidney failure worsened, his morphine was
| increased to the point where it was fatal. The death
| certificate still said renal failure, though.
|
| For me, if I ever got terminal cancer, I'd weigh the quality
| of life of treatment versus non-treatment. I've seen people
| go both ways and I've seen the results being right and wrong
| both ways. I don't want to spend my final months semi-alive
| on a bed or constantly messed up, though.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > it is very difficult for doctors to recommend non-
| treatment or risk being sued into oblivion
|
| Not my experience. I have a loved one going through cancer
| treatment right now and they've been very up front about
| risks, side effects, and even talked about DNRs with them
| what they mean and how they can be applied.
|
| People and their loved ones don't want to experience death.
| It's often as simple as that.
|
| > There was a wink wink situation where as the kidney
| failure worsened, his morphine was increased to the point
| where it was fatal.
|
| In the US, exactly because of situations like this, that
| sort of thing is a lot harder today to pull off.
|
| > I'd weigh the quality of life of treatment versus non-
| treatment.
|
| Something to consider, it's not a binary and treatment can
| look entirely different depending on the cancer.
|
| You can, for example, do a lower than effective dose of
| chemo which will still be effective at slowing the growth
| of cancer.
|
| Some therapies, such as immunotherapy, can be practically a
| walk in the park.
|
| I'd suggest strongly in any case that you have a discussion
| with an oncologist if you ever get to that point. Things in
| medicine aren't nearly as black and white as people
| sometimes assume.
| hylaride wrote:
| > People and their loved ones don't want to experience
| death. It's often as simple as that.
|
| People also don't want (their loved ones) to suffer,
| especially needlessly. (I want to also stress that I'm
| not advocating terminating life, though I do think it
| should be an option - just that this is what my
| grandfather wanted).
|
| > In the US, exactly because of situations like this,
| that sort of thing is a lot harder today to pull off.
|
| I've anecdotally heard that a huge percentage of US
| medicare costs is desperately saving elderly people at
| the end-stages of life instead of a more palliative (and
| some would argue dignified) end. This was made worse
| during the Terri Schiavo case when the very idea was put
| up as anti-life and we were warned that "death panels"
| would be inevitably setup. DNRs are allowed, but
| alleviating the suffering leading up to the end is, for
| both better and worse, heavily restricted.
|
| > I'd suggest strongly in any case that you have a
| discussion with an oncologist if you ever get to that
| point. Things in medicine aren't nearly as black and
| white as people sometimes assume.
|
| I've been extremely lucky that cancer hasn't been much of
| an experience I've had to deal with in my circles. I'm
| mostly pro-modern medicine and I know a lot of progress
| is also being made. I hope that it never happens, but if
| it did I'd want to be informed as possible to make my own
| decisions. The decisions I'd make depend so much on where
| I'm at. I'd be likely more willing to risk it now as I
| have a 7 year old to live for, than I would be in my 90s
| where the odds are a lot less for a comfortable
| experience.
| 6SixTy wrote:
| Chemotherapy is essentially a bet that the drugs will kill
| the cancer faster than you. Because ultimately, cancer isn't
| a virus, bacteria, fungus, parasite, nor even a prion (this
| one is nightmare fuel) -- it's your own cells acting as a
| parasite. This reason alone makes cancer horrific to treat as
| it is.
| cogman10 wrote:
| There are multiple types of chemo. There's not just 1 chemo
| drug and how it looks can be all over the board.
| hinkley wrote:
| Sort of at the opposite end, I knew a PT who harped on
| balance exercises and pointed out that a lot of old people
| have pneumonia as cause of death on their death certificate.
| The pneumonia was often acquired while immobilized by a
| broken hip. The broken hip was caused by falling (+ lower
| body atrophy), so really these people died from falling. It
| just took a while.
|
| I don't know what the right answer is for coding death
| certificates. Maybe the correct answer is to record several
| so we can see comorbidities and contributing factors more
| easily when deciding what science to fund, charities to
| endow, and which treatments to disfavor.
|
| Died of complications of cancer, reaction to chemo. Died of
| complications of hip fracture, pneumonia.
| theglocksaint wrote:
| Proton therapy offers incremental, if any advantage, over
| standard IMRT for non-pediatric cases. In the case of the
| prostate, recent evidence shows no benefit at all. It suffers
| from near hyperbolic marketing from debt-ridden therapy centers
| pushing dubious claims that are now being exposed by high
| quality phase III comparison trials.
|
| HIFU for prostate also is a ripe area for grifters as it is
| advertised and marketed towards low risk cases that would
| probably benefit from active surveillance.
| seesthruya wrote:
| > HIFU for prostate also is a ripe area for grifters as it is
| advertised and marketed towards low risk cases that would
| probably benefit from active surveillance.
|
| Unfortunately, I have extensive first hand experience with
| practices that do this, and you are 100% correct.
|
| The grift is very insidious. If you scan people over a
| certain age with prostate MRI, you will find suspicious
| lesions in a large percentage. And using fusion MRI/US guided
| biopsies, you will inevitable get cancer cells in the sample.
|
| Many (most?) of these people being treated will die WITH
| prostate cancer, not FROM prostate cancer.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Don't the out of pocket maximums make the costs of the
| treatment irrelevant for most people if you have insurance. For
| both of those the patient would probably end up paying the same
| $15,000 out of pocket maximums.
| laterium wrote:
| The real cost will matter at least from an allocation
| perspective. You can't keep relying on a treatment that costs
| $100m even if the patient pays nothing. Someone needs to pay
| that cost.
| deep_signal wrote:
| It's amazing how we're turning sound waves into healing tools.
| jijji wrote:
| The only thing the article fails to mention is the use of more
| than one transducer used to focus multiple ultrasound beams to an
| intersection point in the body, increasing the heating power of
| all beams
| infinet wrote:
| There was a startup in Shanghai in the early 2000. Their device
| used multiple transducers. The probe was at least 40 cm in
| diameter. They did trials on uterine fibroids, among other
| diseases. One of the difficulties was while it looks good in
| theory, but the path ultrasound travels in the body is more
| complicated than, say x-ray or gamma ray. They expected a fine
| focal zone, but sometimes the focal zone was much larger than
| expected. This new wave of ultrasound equipment may have
| discovered better ways to control the sound beam.
| jijji wrote:
| it seems like the intesection point can be smaller than a
| grain of rice, and moved at 0.1mm three dimensionally [0]
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/3Bwq2YxD9eU
| infinet wrote:
| This is amazing! That HIFU 20 years ago used phase array to
| steer beam. Don't know the size of transducer. One of the
| tests I heard of was on a pig leg. The damage was bigger
| than expected, could be in the range of few centimeters,
| probably due to the leg has skin, subcutaneous fat, muscle
| and bone. All have different sound characteristic.
| breppp wrote:
| It's a highly promising direction for many diseases, I
| specifically remember Alzheimer's as one
|
| https://www.fusfoundation.org/diseases-and-conditions/
| bee_rider wrote:
| At the intersection of ultrasound and startups (since this is
| HN), does anyone have any thoughts about that Openwater project?
| They are apparently working on open source ultrasonic medical
| devices.
|
| I don't actually know much about them, I just heard of them
| because their CEO (Mary Lou Jepsen, she's quite famous, right?)
| was on the AMC podcast (months ago, actually, I was just going
| randomly though the back catalogue).
|
| Tech folks pivoting to medical always throws off some alarm bells
| to me, but she was fairly compelling on the podcast and the basic
| idea seemed to make sense. Ultrasonic treatments, using
| diagnostic-level energies, using focusing and resonance based
| tricks, I guess. (It is way outside my wheelhouse, sorry if the
| description is inaccurate).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| She has a couple of TED talks on this tech from several years
| ago.
|
| I was aware of her from the OLPC project and the cool Pixel Qi
| screen tech from that, but haven't watched the talks.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Tech folks pivoting to medical always throws off some alarm
| bells to me, but she was fairly compelling on the podcast and
| the basic idea seemed to make sense._
|
| The best way to evaluate biotech startups from the outside is
| to look at their investors. If they're full of VCs specializing
| in biotech, chances are someone did the bare minimum due
| diligence on the science.
|
| Theranos for example didn't have a single one because biotech
| VCs steered clear of that mess entirely.
| zomg wrote:
| > Tech folks pivoting to medical always throws off some alarm
| bells to me
|
| Same for me. I've been in the medical device industry for 15+
| years now and came from "tech". What a lot of techies
| under/don't appreciate is that the medical device industry is
| heavily regulated and moves at a muuuch slower pace than other
| technologies.
|
| There are lots of regulatory and quality/testing hurdles that
| you must clear (namely verification and validation testing, in
| addition to your 510(k) clearance or approval, if PMA) before
| you can market and sell your device.
|
| I tell customers, on average, a Class II medical device project
| can take 18-24 months and cost $3M to 4M, minimum.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Yeah, it seems that their pitch is that they want to move at
| consumer electronics speed, I mean, their website explicitly
| says
|
| "Our tech-driven approach leverages software, hardware and AI
| [...]
|
| That means we can iterate at the speed of consumer
| electronics"
|
| Which is kind of scary but also a bit interesting.
|
| How would you go about regulating an open source medical
| device? The user can just plop whatever software on there
| that they want, and ultrasound themselves wherever... play
| with resonance and focusing, right?
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> How would you go about regulating an open source medical
| device? The user can just plop whatever software on there
| that they want, and ultrasound themselves wherever... play
| with resonance and focusing, right?_
|
| The manufacturer will still need to validate their own
| firmware and subsequent updates. Whether it's open source
| or not doesn't matter because a huge part of the approval
| process is quality control tied to a specific manufacturer.
|
| Anyone who plops their own software will be liable for the
| consequences and I doubt malpractice insurance would allow
| it in the vast majority of cases.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I really hope she didn't damage her (or her colleague's) hearing
| while doing these experiments!
| backwardsmoo wrote:
| I had the absolute pleasure during my engineering undergraduate
| (Oxford) to take a biomedical module. One of my 'labs' was on
| nonlinear acoustics, specifically ultrasound applied for
| therapeutic uses. It was very captivating seeing a very focused
| point within a block of gel become ablated. A part I found
| particularly exciting was realising that it was a phased array of
| ultrasonic emitters, so that the point where the ablation
| occurred could in fact be placed anywhere you desired in the gel.
|
| They showed us results of HIFU applied to real patients to non-
| invasively ablate tumours and treat prostate issues. As far as I
| can tell the probe creating the ultrasonic waves needs to be
| relatively close.
|
| A thought I had at the time was if you knew all of the material
| properties of all of the tissues inside someone and their
| locations (say with an MRI) you could in theory apply this even
| deeper in someone than is currently possible - with a larger
| stick-on patch of actuators as a phased array.
|
| Finally, another memorable thing that was discussed was what
| another researcher was doing with ultrasonics. Stride (who I am
| delighted to say was a fantastic lecturer) was very interested in
| bubbles. She would construct tiny bubbles where the surface (or
| interior?) was made of a chemotherapy drug. These bubbles could
| then be injected into someone's blood stream and would be
| ruptured using ultrasound to allow for extremely targeted
| application of chemotherapy (the jet formed from rupture would be
| so strong it would inject the drug into nearby tissue).
|
| Fascinating, fascinating stuff but of course developed over many
| years of hard work.
| bikeshaving wrote:
| Okay, you sold me. Where can I get an ultrasonic massage?
| walrusted wrote:
| a high percentage of physical therapists have an ultrasound
| massage device.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Stride...was very interested in bubbles_
|
| This reminds me of Feynman s spinning plates.
|
| It also drives home the serendipity of science. One can easily
| pander a researcher spending their days thinking about bubbles
| from a place of ignorance. Yet this is what basic research
| often looks like--play.
| sndean wrote:
| As someone who has worked on bubbles from a
| bioengineering/synthetic biology perspective, it is
| definitely play at some level. Like "what happens if we
| freeze dry them?" And of course determining which extremely
| specific kind works best for whatever application, etc.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| "Ablation (Latin: ablatio - removal) is the removal or
| destruction of something from an object by vaporization,
| chipping, erosive processes, or by other means."
| aantix wrote:
| > treat prostate issues
|
| Is prostate size reduction possible?
| backwardsmoo wrote:
| The example that I saw was of a patient whose prostate had
| swollen closing up the urethra. HIFU was applied to ablate
| the urethra which "opened it back up" so that fluids could
| pass through again un-impeded. As a consequence the patient
| could then live a normal life.
| nilslindemann wrote:
| I hope for a great future of this therapy.
| 716dpl wrote:
| There was a game in the early '80s called Microsurgeon where you
| piloted a robot probe into a body to cure it of diseases. It was
| armed with an array of tools, one of which was ultrasound that
| you could use to destroy cancer. I wonder how long this idea has
| been around for.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsurgeon_(video_game)
| siliconc0w wrote:
| You can get a ultrasonic fat cavitation machine off Ali Express
| for a few hundred bucks. The technology has gotten surprisingly
| cheap.
| ncr100 wrote:
| It looks like this can be used to burst and liquify body fat,
| near to the surface of the skin! Wild.
| spockz wrote:
| Okay... and is that something that is beneficial? How? Will
| it flow out from an incision? Will it just target white or
| brown fat? Any other effects like also liquifying muscle
| tissue?
| mountainriver wrote:
| Also very very interesting for brain modulation!
| michael1999 wrote:
| My mother received ultrasound ablation as brain surgery to treat
| idiopathic tremors. It was wild.
| zzzeek wrote:
| I've got a node in my thyroid that can reasonably only be removed
| chemically, which has risks of blowing out my whole thyroid.
| ultrasound treatment is now available for it, however have been
| going to my endocrinologist every four months for a bloodwork
| checkup (because I need to take thyroid-suppressing drugs until
| the node can be removed) and am still waiting for him to have
| heard about this treatment outside of my own telling him so (even
| though his larger medical organization, NYU, offers it, it still
| seems to not be routine within his practice).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| There has to be a way to find a practice that uses this tech?
| zzzeek wrote:
| absoultely but I am in no hurry and I would like it to be
| Very Boring and Ordinary For My Particular Condition before I
| go anywhere near it
| verisimi wrote:
| If it can target and kill cancer, how can it also be safe for
| foetuses?
| f1shy wrote:
| You can vary the frequency, power, energy, focus... is not the
| SAME ultrasound.
| verisimi wrote:
| But surely it could cause some damage at a lower frequency,
| power, etc anyway?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| That's like asking how if a laser can cut through steel how
| lamps can be safe to have indoors.
| verisimi wrote:
| Do you have a link or something that compares the power in
| both? I can't find one.
|
| This is the summary I get from chatgpt - comparing
| Histotripsy and ultrasound imaging
|
| | Property | Strongest Diagnostic / Imaging Ultrasound |
| Histotripsy (Therapeutic Ultrasound |
|
| | Frequency | 2 - 10 MHz (obstetric: 2-5 MHz; high-res
| imaging up to 15 MHz) | 0.25 - 3 MHz (sometimes up to 6 MHz)
| |
|
| | Pressure (Peak Negative) | Up to ~5-6 MPa (mechanical index
| limit [?] 1.9) | 10 - 100 MPa (depending on type: intrinsic
| vs. boiling histotripsy) |
|
| | Intensity (Spatial Peak, Temporal Average) | Typically <
| 0.1 W/cm2; upper safe limit [?] 0.72 W/cm2 (FDA/AIUM) | 100 -
| 10,000 W/cm2 (very high peak intensities) |
|
| | Pulse Duration | Microseconds (~1-5 us typical) |
| Microseconds to milliseconds (short bursts for mechanical
| disruption) |
|
| Its kind of hard to know what this means - some of the
| numbers seem pretty close/crossover - but I don't think
| saying the difference is akin to a laser and a light.
| an-honest-moose wrote:
| There are 2 to 5 orders of magnitude difference in
| intensity. That alone is a pretty big difference.
| fragmede wrote:
| Shit, you figured it out. It's not! That's whats been causing
| all the autism! Big ultrasound has been managing to keep this
| under wraps for _decades_!
| themantalope wrote:
| A few points based on comments I'm seeing about the article.
|
| This method of ultrasound treatment is called histotripsy. The
| underlying mechanism it uses to treat tumors is by focused
| ultrasound beams that mechanically disrupt cell membranes . It
| basically turns the lesion into soup. It does not treat the
| lesion by heating, although there are other techniques that do
| use ultrasound to ablate tissue with thermal energy.
|
| Where I have seen it used and discussed is in the liver, whether
| that be metastatic disease to the liver or primary liver tumors.
|
| One challenge is that in the liver you can't use it for lesions
| that are near the capsule of the liver. It can also be difficult
| to keep the ultrasound beam focused on the lesion with
| respiration, especially if the tumor is small.
|
| It's an interesting technique and I think more people will use it
| over time. Whether it will be better than other established
| techniques like microwave ablation or radioembolization (for
| liver tumors) remains to be seen. I'm an interventional
| radiologist.
| esafak wrote:
| How does it compare with stereotactic radiosurgery (Gamma Knife)?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotactic_surgery
| theglocksaint wrote:
| Gamma Knife is used in brain lesions where focused ultrasound
| is not a viable treatment option or likely to ever be.
| esafak wrote:
| Is ultrasound preferable where it is viable?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| There are already lots and lots of treatments for localized
| tumors in the liver - radiofrequency oblation, cryo oblation,
| microwaves, etc. These kinds of articles often tout new
| treatments as a bold new thing, but they don't really change the
| state of medicine, and it's not like they would be a replacement
| for chemo, for example. I'd be very curious how histotripsy
| compares to these other localized tumor treatments.
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