Focused Ultrasound Therapy
Focused ultrasound is a noninvasive, therapeutic technology with the potential to improve the quality of life and decrease the cost of care for patients with ovarian tumors. This novel technology focuses beams of ultrasound energy precisely and accurately on targets deep in the body without damaging surrounding normal tissue.
How it Works
Where the beams converge, focused ultrasound produces precise ablation (thermal destruction of tissue). This destruction can be done to completely destroy the target or to partially treat it, and partial treatment is believed to stimulate the patient’s immune response, which may have a broader impact.
Advantages
The primary options for treatment of ovarian cancer include medication and invasive surgery.
For certain patients, focused ultrasound could provide a noninvasive alternative to surgery with less risk of complications – such as surgical wound healing or infection – at a lower cost. It can reach the desired target without damaging surrounding tissue and is repeatable, if necessary. Focused ultrasound also offers enhanced chemotherapy dose for the target, with less impact to the rest of the patient.
Clinical Trials
At the present time, there are no clinical trials recruiting patients for focused ultrasound treatment of ovarian tumors.
The Foundation updates these pages regularly, but with the increasing number of clinical trials, we want to be sure that our audience has the latest information available. Therefore, we also added the website search information for the above trials. If you click here, it will take you to the latest information available from https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/.
Regulatory Approval and Reimbursement
Focused ultrasound treatment for ovarian tumors is not yet approved by regulatory bodies or covered by medical insurance companies.
Notable Papers
Guo X, Liu W, Zhou K, Zhu H, Pan L, Feng C, Liu L. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) assisted by a rectal Foley catheter for the treatment of recurrent mucinous ovarian cancer: a case report and literature review. Front Oncol. 2024 Dec 4;14:1498631. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1498631. eCollection 2024. PMID: 39697226
Li M, Zhu Y, Yang C, Yang M, Ran H, Zhu Y, Zhang W. Acoustic triggered nanobomb for US imaging guided sonodynamic therapy and activating antitumor immunity. Drug Deliv. 2022 Dec;29(1):2177-2189. doi: 10.1080/10717544.2022.2095058.
Zhu X, Yan S, Xiao F, Xue M. PLGA nanoparticles delivering CPT-11 combined with focused ultrasound inhibit platinum resistant ovarian cancer. Transl Cancer Res. 2021 Apr;10(4):1732-1743. doi: 10.21037/tcr-20-3171.
Imseeh G, Giles SL, Taylor A, Brown MRD, Rivens I, Gordon-Williams R, Ter Haar G, deSouza NM. Feasibility of palliating recurrent gynecological tumors with MRGHIFU: comparison of symptom, quality-of-life, and imaging response in intra and extra-pelvic disease. Int J Hyperthermia. 2021;38(1):623-632. doi: 10.1080/02656736.2021.1904154.
Lei T, Guo X, Gong C, Chen X, Ran F, He Y, Shi Q, He J. High-intensity focused ultrasound ablation in the treatment of recurrent ovary cancer and metastatic pelvic tumors: a feasibility study. Int J Hyperthermia. 2021;38(1):282-287. doi: 10.1080/02656736.2021.1889698.
Click here for additional references from PubMed.