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GILBERT, AZ (AZFamily) — A new cancer treatment is destroying liver tumors once considered untreatable, and Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center is one of the only Arizona hospitals offering the therapy.
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Linda Lindquist, of Gilbert, was diagnosed with liver cancer 15 years ago.
“I had just gone to Peru to Machu Pichu and hiked, feeling so good,” she told Arizona’s Family. “I was so proud of myself because I was keeping up with all the younger gals.”
A stabbing pain in her stomach was the first clue that something was wrong.
“I had a liver tumor, weighed four and a half pounds and it was the size of a volleyball,” Lindquist recalled.
In a 2011 YouTube video after she had surgery to remove the tumor in Houston, Lindquist said that “it’s hard to believe what I thought was a hernia is a cancerous tumor in my liver this large,” while pointing at an X-ray image of her liver.
A third recurrence
Last year, she needed another surgery to remove a second tumor. The cancer returned for a third time this year.
“This happened to be a very small tumor in a location that is very difficult or risky to remove,” Dr. Michael Choti, the chief surgical oncologist at Banner MD Anderson, told Arizona’s Family.
Choti wanted to try something new.
How histotripsy works
Less than a month ago, Lindquist underwent an innovative procedure called histotripsy. The FDA-approved therapy requires no needles or incisions.
“There’s a huge difference between histotripsy and getting the slice,” Lindquist told Arizona’s Family, adding later, “I never even had to take a Tylenol in the hospital in recovery, and went home, and I felt absolutely normal the next day.”
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Rather than using radiation or heat, histotripsy uses “very focused” ultrasound waves to “locally cavitate or locally destroy tissue” through the formation of microbubbles, destroying the cancerous cells, according to Choti.
The patient is placed in a water bath so the sound waves go through water and directly into them, “because the one unique thing about ultrasound energy delivery is that it can’t go through the air,” Choti said.
Lindquist, now 77, battled liver cancer with a positive outlook.
“I don’t worry because God is in control,” she said. “I just am so blessed and grateful and just totally full of joy.”
“I feel reborn,” she said. “It’s just a miracle.”
Histotripsy is currently FDA-approved to treat liver cancer only. Research is underway to determine whether it could also be effective in other forms of cancer.
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