July 29, 2002
Conference considers ultrasound for cancer treatment, noninvasive surgery
In what is only the second meeting of its kind, the first conducted in the United States, more than 200 researchers and students are expected in Seattle for presentations Tuesday through Aug. 1 as part of an international symposium on therapeutic ultrasound. Presentations will be conducted at the Washington Athletic Club.
Unlike the familiar use of ultrasound to obtain images inside one’s body to diagnose such things as tumors or check on the health of an unborn child, therapeutic ultrasound is much more concentrated and targeted and is used to treat medical problems not just diagnose them.
Treating kidney stones with ultrasound, called lithotripsy, has been widely used since the 1980s. In just the last 10 years, however, researchers have been developing high intensity focused ultrasound devices to treat such problems as cancerous tumors, wounds and internal bleeding. While one clinical trial to treat prostate cancer is underway in the United States, therapeutic ultrasound already is being used to treat cancer patients in Europe and China. High intensity focused ultrasound can be used through the skin, making surgery unnecessary and, when properly focused, it doesn’t heat the tissue between the device and the spot needing treatment the way lasers do.
Having attended the first international meeting in China last year, Larry Crum of the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory said he brought the second meeting to the United States so that medical professionals and researchers here could assess the potential and decide which aspects might merit more investigation. Crum is a physicist specializing in medical acoustics and is director of a group of UW radiologists, surgeons and physicists investigating medical and industrial uses of ultrasound.
Speakers include pioneer Christian Chaussy
— The lead-off speaker Monday is Christian Chaussy the German urologist who in the mid-’80s was the first in the world to treat patients using sound energy to break up kidney stones. He will speak about the use of high-intensity focused ultrasound to treat prostate cancer patients in Europe. He also will receive a pioneer award from his colleagues during the Seattle meeting.
— Feng Wu of the Chongqing Medical University will describe four years of clinical use of high-intensity focused ultrasound for liver cancer, malignant bone tumors, breast cancer, soft tissue sarcomas, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer and other solid tumors. Crum believes China is 2? years ahead of the rest of the world in developing such treatments.
— Michael Marberger of the University of Vienna will report findings that high-intensity focused ultrasound used to treat prostrate cancer may then enhances the body’s own antitumor immune response.
15 sponsors
Crum secured sponsorship from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, which oversees the development of medical materials and logistics for the Army, and 14 other agencies, companies and foundations. (NOTE: “Materiel” is the correct spelling.)
Registered to attend are faculty and researchers from institutions including Johns Hopkins University, Mayo Clinic, Duke University and the University of Tokyo. Representatives from more than a dozen firms from countries such as France, Israel, Germany, the United Kingdom and China are expected including the principals of the three Chinese companies already building high intensity focused ultrasound devices. The Chinese minister of health recently said he would like to see one of these devices in every one of the more than 15,000 hospitals that perform cancer surgery in China.
Symposium at Washington Athletic Club; agenda at http://www.istu2.org/
Reporters are welcome to attend at no charge. Please check in at the registration table for a nametag.
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