Week 6 : HIFU Technologies!

As the end of the program is approaching, my work is now focused on wrapping up the research and achieving the main goals established at the beginning of the program. On the side of walking beautiful landmarks of NYC, trying every ethnic food I could imagine, shopping, and getting to know this amazing city; I can say I almost reach my objective. On the clinical side, besides the urology/oncology area where I have been working, I also have experienced pathology, other areas of oncology, radiology, and plastic surgery so far. Therefore, I am also getting to my goal of experiencing several medical areas before leaving the hospital. Finally, on the research side, I am currently working on conducting final investigation to work on a former comparison between the FDA approved methods for HIFU (High Intensity Focal Ultrasound).

During this past week, clinically wise, I had the opportunity to shadow Dr. Spector during one of his intensive and exciting surgery days. All of my previous experiences in the OR were on robotic surgery for tumor removal or prostatectomy. Therefore, seeing a non-robotic surgery was one of my check list points during immersion since they are two completely different experiences. Two surgeries of very different nature were performed by Dr. Spector that day. Both of the surgeries utilized devices to accomplished goals during the treatment (a mesh and a tissue expander); it is amazing to observe in real life how the devices that Biomedical engineers study and designed are implemented in the human body. Everything on this OR experience was different from my previous ones; from the OR dynamics to the body exposure during the procedure. It was an amazing experience!

On the research side, I have been focusing on clinical studies to analyze the outcomes of two different FDA approved HIFU technologies. HIFU technologies are minimally invasive and are utilized for focal ablation of the prostate (partial or radical) with low secondary effects. Not so long ago (2014, 2015) these two HIFU technologies (SonaCare Sonablate, and EDAP’S Ablatherm) were 510 K cleared by the FDA and commercialized. We are focusing on investigating the mechanism by which they both work, pros, and cons of each of the technologies for a future publication.