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Eight BWHers last month traveled to China and shared their expertise on a BWH-developed procedure that offers an alternative for patients with inoperable, cancerous tumors.
Since becoming the first hospital in the world to perform an MRI-guided percutaneous cryotherapy, BWH has been an international leader in this minimally invasive procedure. It allows doctors to view a 3-D image of the body’s interior as they place needle-sized probes through the skin to freeze and eradicate tumors in the kidney, liver, muscle and bone. In coming weeks, Peking Union Medical College Hospital will begin offering this same procedure thanks to the guidance of BWH physicians, nurses, MR technologists and technical staff.
“We organized this symposium to share our experience with Chinese doctors,” Ferenc Jolesz, MD, director of the Division of MRI and Image Guided Therapy Program, said. “Since we developed it, the technology has matured, and we are ready to teach others for several clinical applications. We showed our Chinese colleagues that the best approach is to assemble multidisciplinary teams that can apply this treatment method for several diseases.”
In October, a team of BWHers presented during the MRI-Guided Therapy Symposium – Focus on Cryotherapy. Jolesz and Lei Zhao, PhD, who has an affiliation with BWH and XinAoMDT Technology Co., LTD in Beijing, organized the two-day symposium, which was sponsored by the National Center for Image Guided Therapy and XinAoMDT Technology Co., LTD.
Percutaneous cryotherapy is a promising treatment for some patients whose tumors cannot be surgically removed, or who have co-morbidities that put them at risk for surgery. In China, doctors perform cryotherapy using ultrasound and CT imaging—which offers patients a similar minimally invasive procedure—but this limits visibility for doctors during the procedure and decreases their ability to destroy all cancerous cells.
“In China, they have the technology available to perform MR-guided cryotherapy and the demand from patients,” said Stuart Silverman, MD, director of Abdominal Imaging and Intervention, CT Scan and Cross-sectional Interventional Service. “Our team provided the training for this procedure, which will benefit their patients tremendously.”
BWH plans to maintain a working relationship with its Beijing colleagues to ensure their successful implementation of MR-guided percutaneous cryotherapy.