Engineering surgery
TRIALS that cook tumours using microwave technology and offer cancer patients extended life expectancy, will begin within a year.
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Mr Habib expects the technology, which he describes as mind-blowing, to finally be available for use on tumours affecting the brain, kidneys, lung, spleen and pancreas.
IC spinout, Toumaz Technology, will produce the micropower electronics.
It enables the surgeon to cut across different organs without losing blood, resulting in safer removal of tumours, while also destroying tumours that cannot be removed with surgery.
"I knew it took a minute to cook food at home and thought the same principle could apply to the liver," he explained. "The dream of every surgeon is to be able to cut through liver tumours without letting them bleed; patients can lose either very little blood or up to 50 units during one operation which then leads to postoperative complications.
"Just as soup takes 30 seconds in a microwave to bring to the boil, blasting a tumour will eliminate the cancer which can then be cut out with minimum blood loss. A tumour with living cancer cells becomes lifeless as microwaves remove the water content. In just minutes, something that was living matter suddenly resembles a slab of marble which can then be cut away."
The method has been patented by Mr Habib and his colleagues. EMcision Ltd, an Imperial College spin out, secured £250,000 for development and trials from the University Challenge Seed Fund, funded by the DTI. Fundraising is currently underway to secure an additional £4 million.
Microwave technology follows the surgeons four year success programme which lengthened the lives of more than 70 patients at Hammersmith after using heat ablation treatment to destroy liver tumours using radiofrequency. The technique was successfully carried out in other UK centres.
As the process is long and exacting one centimetre of tumour can take up to 20 minutes to eliminate and only a small percentage of patients with small tumours can be treated he realised that something which took minutes rather than hours to work should be devised.
"Waiting lists have meant its taken a full day to do one patient, but its not fair to make cancer patients wait. Slowness is a major factor with liver surgery, yet with this device, we can significantly increase the number of patients who can benefit from surgery and ultimately, will have improved survival.
"Microwave means quick anaesthetics and better recovery time. Five electrodes on all sides of the tumour means we can cook it and kill it within five minutes."
The merging of medicine and engineering marks a radical breakthrough with engineers, scientists and doctors working together. Mr Habib meets members of the department of electrical and electronic engineering each week to discuss progress.
"The testing has not been attempted before as the technology to support it had not been developed. Doctors today fine tune engineering projects. Medical progress in this century is driven by engineers and scientists and that is what we have at IC. Engineers and doctors are alike; they work through trial and error."
Chris Toumazou added: "Our future aim is to eventually leave the indwelling electrodes to control tumour size. We are working on a way to transmit power from outside to generate sufficient energy to burn out the tumour by using an implanted miniature tumour ablation device.
"This will be at significantly reduced power levels and will obviously take longer, but its advantage will be in remotely burning out remaining and returning tumours over a period of time, resulting in no further immediate operations being required."
*** © Imperial College 2001. This article originally appeared in IC Reporter, the staff newspaper of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. Please contact the editor Tanya Reed (Email: icreporter@imperial.ac.uk, Telephone: +44 20 7594 6697) for permission to re-use any or all parts of this article.***
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