Emerging HIFU Applications in Cancer Therapy

Emerging HIFU Applications in Cancer Therapy

In the following article we will be discussing in brief about the Emerging HIFU Application in Cancer Treatment:HIFU or High intensity focused ultrasound, is a non-invasive modality that is promising for the treatment of tumors in conjunction with diagnostic ultrasound guidance or magnetic resonance imaging. HIFU is being used increasingly for treatment of uterine fibroids and prostate cancer.

Over the last 10 years a growing number of clinical trials have examined HIFU treatment of both malignant and benign tumors of the liver, kidney, bone, pancreas, breast, thyroid, parathyroid, connective tissue and brain.

For some of these emerging indications or signs, HIFU is poised to become a serious adjunct or alternative to current standard treatments – including surgery, gene therapy, immunotherapy, radiation, and chemotherapy.

Current or nowadays commercially available HIFU devices are marketed for their applications of thermal ablation. Whereas, in the future, lower energy treatments may play a significant or important role in mediating targeted drug and gene delivery for cancer treatment.

Conclusion and Future Application

High intensity focused ultrasound or HIFU is a non-invasive and effective technique to achieve tumor ablation and to facilitate targeted medical therapy to tumors. Even though HIFU technology has been in clinical use since the 1950s, limited complimentary technologies have hindered or obstructed its advancement into clinical oncology beyond a small spectrum of disease.

Nowadays, HIFU treatment in Dwarka has reached an exciting threshold of both guidance-system development and transducer. The advent or arrival of MRI guidance systems with thermal mapping at real-time, phased-array transducers with computed tomographic correction algorithms, motion gating for both MR thermometry and MRgHIFU therapy, endoluminal transducers, temperature mapping for ultrasound diagnostic, and a number of innovations in medical nanotechnology for e.g. microbubble-assisted BBB disruption, and gene therapy agents capable of targeted and encapsulated chemotherapy, thermally induced delivery have paved the way for oncological applications that were previously or formerly impractical in western medicine.

HIFU or High intensity focused ultrasound is poised to bridge the promising data from preliminary trials to more robust and randomized clinical trials for treatment of liver, kidney, bone, breast, pancreatic, thyroid, desmoid, parathyroid and brain tumors.

Even though completion of such trials is time-consuming and challenging for relatively uncommon diseases, the results will help to better define the emergent role of HIFU in management of a broad and wide spectrum of oncology.