Surgery's new sound

• Autores: Helen Thomson
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2950, 2014, págs. 38-41
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Thomson talks about a clever way of surgery which focuses on acoustic waves. This high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) requires no cuts to be made, and many operations don't even need an anaesthetic, so the patient can be in and out of hospital within a day. After promising trials treating prostate cancer, it is now looking as if HIFU could become a medical Swiss army knife for all kinds of procedures. And even in parts of the body where the focused waves can't burn away tissue directly, they can still boost the uptake of drugs in specific organs. The method has even been used to prevent severe illness in fetuses in the womb.