Introduction to HIFU

High Intensity Focused Ultrasound [HIFU] is used to treat cancer tumours without requiring surgery. HIFU has developed over more than 10 years and has been used to successfully treat over 8,000 patients worldwide. Having achieved the European safety approval CE Mark in 2005, it is now available for use with private patient cancer treatments.

Clinical Trials at The HIFU Unit in Oxford confirm the claim that certain cancers in the LIVER and KIDNEYS can be successfully treated and certain cancers of the PANCREAS and BONE may also be suitable using HIFU. Further HIFU applications are under investigation.

Cancers can be malignant and capable of spreading through the body and potentially life-threatening; or benign, but potentially uncomfortable if they grow. They can be diffuse (spread through an organ or the body) or "lumpy". With HIFU we treat both malignant and benign lumpy cancers. HIFU equipment provides:

• Low power imaging ultrasound - which enables us to locate and look at the cancer; and
• High intensity focused ultrasound - which can accurately focus on the tumour and kill it.

The healthy tissue through which the ultrasound passes is not affected. The benefits of HIFU treatment:

• HIFU is clean energy, which works by heating the cancer cells.
• HIFU treatment causes far less damaging side-effects than conventional treatments.
• HIFU can avoid chemotherapy.
• HIFU does not involve radiotherapy.
• HIFU does not involve surgery; it is non-invasive.
• HIFU doesn`t require a lengthy hospital stay.
• HIFU treatment may result in a strengthening of the patient' s immunity to cancer.