Personalized Care Plans, Experienced Care Teams
At Fred Hutch, we’re proud to offer comprehensive care for patients with many types of liver tumors. Whether you receive all your cancer care through Fred Hutch or come here for specialized treatment, our multidisciplinary team of experts meets weekly to ensure you—and every patient—receives the best possible treatment.
For patients living with liver tumors, having the widest possible range of treatment options gives your care team the opportunity to create a care plan that’s best for you.
The addition of histotripsy treatment makes Fred Hutch the only cancer center to offer the full range of liver tumor treatments—and opens door to this recent, minimally invasive technology.
What is Histotripsy?
Histotripsy is a treatment that uses high-frequency ultrasound waves to non-invasively destroy liver tumors. High amplitude ultrasound pulses create a dense “bubble cloud” at a precise location within the body to precisely target and destroy liver tumors without damaging surrounding bile ducts, blood vessels, and other critical structures.
Unlike other treatments that require surgery, radiation, and longer recovery times, histotripsy is performed as an outpatient procedure, allowing patients to return home after a few hours.
As a newer treatment, the benefits of histotripsy – beyond simple tumor destruction and faster recover time – are still being unlocked. Early research shows that because the treatment preserves the protein structures of the tumor, it may help the body deliver a powerful immune response to any remaining tumor cells.
Who is Eligible for Histotripsy?
Histotripsy can be an appropriate treatment for patients dealing with both benign and malignant liver tumors, including primary tumors and secondary tumors—meaning cancer that has spread from other parts of the body.
Whether you’re a good candidate for histotripsy depends on what your care team recommends. Histotripsy can be used as a primary treatment, in conjunction with other liver cancer treatments, or as a bridge to liver transplant, keeping tumors at bay until a liver transplant is available. It’s also a great option in patients for whom surgery is not an option, or for tumors that are hard to reach with traditional treatments like ablation.
A key benefit of histotripsy is that, unlike other liver tumor treatments, histotripsy doesn’t require patients to stop chemotherapy before treatment. This means that histotripsy can easily work in conjunction with other treatments within your care plan.
What to Expect
For most patients, histotripsy is a one-time treatment performed in an outpatient setting at the Fred Hutch campus. A few weeks before the actual treatment, you’ll undergo a planning ultrasound to confirm your tumor’s location and ensure that the tumor can be reached by the ultrasound waves.
On your treatment day, you’ll be placed under general anesthesia to ensure you lie perfectly still so the ultrasound waves can accurately pinpoint your tumor. An ultrasound transducer will be placed over the tumor to deliver the ultrasound waves. The treatment lasts roughly 30-90 minutes. After a few hours in recovery, you’ll be able to go home with minimal discomfort.
Benefits of Histotripsy
Histotripsy is just one tool in our toolkit for treating liver tumors. In patients for whom histotripsy is an appropriate treatment path, the benefits are significant.
- No surgery or incisions required
- Outpatient procedure – go home the same day
- No long-term recovery
- Targeted treatment to a specific depth and intensity, reducing damage to surrounding tissue
- Reduced complications and side effects, compared to surgery
- No need to stop chemotherapy