Dr. Zhen Xu describes a patient whose tumor had been pressing on a nerve, causing pain that stopped her from running. After histotripsy treatment, the tumor was liquefied almost immediately, relieving the mechanical pressure, and the patient went for a 20-mile run within the first week, something Xu says she would never advise. Xu uses this to argue that a non-invasive mechanical treatment preserves quality of life in a way surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation often do not, since those come with pain, appetite loss, and other harsh side effects.
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Xu notes full absorption of the liquefied tumor by the body can take about a month, even though the mechanical pressure relief happens almost right away.
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She lists specific chemotherapy and radiation side effects beyond hair loss, including appetite loss, body aches, and teeth loosening, to contrast with the non-invasive recovery.
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The conversation briefly touches on a one-year follow-up paper on the treatment, which Krishna had not found because he sorted search results by citation count rather than recency.
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52:27away. So, uh, our hope is we're using all the advanced technology to make the clinicians' jobs easier and to make the experience for the patients better. Cause our patients after treatment, they return home almost all of them immediately after procedure. There's no hospitalization. Wow. Um, because you're not, there's no surgery. Yeah. That's funny because patient, we cover, you know, some patient will recover and say, are you sure you did something to me? Cause you know, you, you, you don't have the incision. Yeah. Therefore you don't feel it. When they go home and they have supper at home, they return to, you know, normal activity.
53:10We had a crazy patient. Okay. She had her tumor and, and she was a runner. Okay. So she couldn't run because her tumor pressing on the nerves for a few years. So she couldn't run, uh, because of the pain. Right. And then she had the tumor treated by because even though absorption of this by the body take can take a, you know, month, you see it pretty fast, but the tumor is liquefied right away. Oh, so there's no mechanical stress anymore. So, yeah. So there is a basic liquefies or soft enough. So she immediately, like the pain disappeared. Right. So this crazy patient went out and run 20 miles within the first week of her tumor
53:53treatment. I don't add, you know, I would not advise any. I bet her clinicians were not happy about that. But she was like, she was so, uh, excited to have her like that. Right. Right. Right. And, and, um, I think that it's not just about curing patients or treating patients. It's also about the quality of life, right? You can get the cancer treatment and the cancer treatment is, uh, cancer is awful. The, the, the, the things that people don't think about is the cancer treatment is really, really awful, right? You talk about surgery painful, you talk about chemotherapy, it's horrible. Like you are getting all kinds of side effects, not
54:35just the hair falling out, like lack of appetite, right? And then you, you're just feeling your body aching, even your teeth, you know, loosen up and all it's create, you know, it just really, uh, a lot of bad effects, radiation is also toxic. So this is a way to give patients not only, you know, a potential treatment, um, for patients who run out of options, you know, don't have anywhere to go, but also for patients who have options, but they view this as a way to, uh, get cancer treated, but still maintain that quality of life. Therefore it gave that hope. So it's not just awful, awful, awful, right?
55:18Like there's a hope that you can do treatment and still can have your normal activity. So that's why the non-invasive treatment, I think in the future would be a way to go. Yeah. Wow. And this is 2024. And so the recent paper that's, uh, that follows up for a year, this is like very recent cutting edge stuff, I guess. The recent paper is part, I think it's actually 2026, probably this year. Yeah. I probably, I probably didn't see it. Yeah. Cause I think I ranked like by citations just cause it's more recent, doesn't have as many citations as this one. So then I just thought like, yeah, that's, you know, that's a lesson for me, future Krishna, when you're looking for papers, don't
56:01just, don't just order by citations. But that's really new though. If you are now within the field, it's very hard for you to actually, you know, being able to get, so I'm actually impressed how you were able to pick out, you know, kind of the paper representing, uh, I would say the game-changing moments of the technology development. So it's actually very nice selection that you have here.