Neurosurgeons Use MRI-Guided Lasers To Destroy Tumors

breadboy21 writes "In the seemingly perpetual battle to rid this planet of cancer, a team of neurosurgeons from Washington University are using a new MRI-guided high-intensity laser probe to 'cook' brain tumors that would otherwise be completely inoperable. According to Dr. Eric C. Leuthardt, this procedure 'offers hope to certain patients who had few or no options before,' with the laser baking the cancer cells deep within the brain while leaving the good tissue around it unmarred. The best part, however, is that this is already moving beyond the laboratory, with a pair of doctors at Barnes-Jewish Hospital using it successfully on a patient last month. Regrettably, just three hospitals at the moment are equipped with the Monteris AutoLITT device, but if we know anything about anything related to lasers, it'll be everywhere in no time flat."

Re:Meanwhile

[npuzzle]

Many heart problems can be solved through prevention; sadly, the same cannot be said for many neurological conditions.

Re:Gamma Knife

[ColdWetDog]

This is nothing like the gamma knife, aside from that it uses radiation. They're using an MRI to guide a physical probe through the brain to the tumor where the probe then does a thermal discharge. So instead of shooting intersecting deathrays (very cool stuff by the way), they're sending a guided killbot that gets right up close.

Actually it does have a lot of similarities - they use MRI imaging to figure out which parts of the brain to fry, then use a fairly localized beam of Something Evil (gamma rays in the Gamma Knife, light energy in this device) to toast the 'bad' tissue. So it's really just another techy way of doing the same thing - minimally invasive surgery and will likely have the same efficacy (excellent to poor depending on the type of tumor) and cost shitloads of money.

Watch to see the hype (ooh! lasers!) run right past the research showing that it works just as well as extant technology and costs more.

/grouchy cynical mode OFF temporarily

Re:Meanwhile

[Kurofuneparry]

Yes, coronary disease is a big problem and yes it's the major killer in the US [cdc.gov] but it isn't the major killer worldwide [who.int], just in developed nations. You'll notice on the first link that cancer is still way up on causes of death in the US and, despite your claims to the contrary, I can assure that now in my second year of medical school that coronary syndromes are a major focus in medical education and research.

The work these scientists did is certainly not the first implementation of this idea but it's quite worth the investment. Stenting is not a miracle cure and likely wont ever be; it's just delaying the inevitable. The only powerful approach to reducing heart related deaths is prevention and education; even then, most deaths due to 'old age' are written up as heart related deaths so they'll keep going up as we get better at fighting the world's real number one killer: simple infections.

Then again, I'm an idiot ......

Re:Meanwhile

[AnonymousClown]

Many heart problems can be solved through prevention; sadly, the same cannot be said for many neurological conditions.

That's right. Just stop the smoking, drinking heavily, stop the junk food and get out and get some moderate exercise would prevent many if not most of the heart disease (and stroke) in the World. Not smoking would also prevent a lot of impotence too. It would be much more cost effective to spend a fraction of the money on education than whiz bang, usually obscenely expensive, gadgetry.

Re:Meanwhile

[grasshoppa]

How many of those deaths are preventable by proper diet and exercise?

Now how many brain tumors are preventable with proper diet and exercise?

Re:So, let me get this straight

[Czech Blue Bear]

Sir, your opinion is both ugly and wrong.

Cancer is not a simple disease caused by a damage of a single gene. There are too many genes that can, under "proper" circumstances, cause or promote cancer. In most cases, this is not a type of one genetic damage but a complex structure of various events, some of them external. Even with the hardest eugenics, you won't be able to eradicate, or even limit, this type of disease; in fact, you will probably end with the contrary. The risk of malignant growth is too intertwined with the very basical functioning of cells themselves; there is always a need for creation of new cells, and always there is a risk of a runaway loop.

Secondly, if a young person is diagnosed with a type of cancer that is known to be hereditary, he or she is informed by the doctor and probably will decide either not to try having his/her own children, or take special care to minimize the risks.

Vitamin D deficiency, toxins, junk food, memetics

[Paul Fernhout]

There is no doubt a genetic component to cancer but you can't jump from there to the kind of social processes you are implyimg without considering a lot of issues (including how our genes related to compassion towards each other may let us survive as a collective when individually we would all die).

As an example of that, here are two links to two compassionate people, Dr John Cannell and Dr. Joel Fuhrman, with advice that, used together, may prevent most cancers and even treat a few (by boosting the body's own immune system):
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml [vitamindcouncil.org]
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cat-cancer.html [diseaseproof.com]
Should we honor these two people for those contributions to humanity (including treating any early genetic diseases they might get) or should we just say, "tough luck, bad genes" if they do get sick somehow and let them die right outside of hospitals?
    "Andy Bales- SiCKO: What Has Happened to Health Care?"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC7zI7VXcCA [youtube.com]

Besides, you've seen the movie "Gattaca", right? How long before people are designing their DNA? I'm not saying they will do a good job for it, though, and there may be other social and personal consequences too, like shown in that movie. :-( What nature tends to prize is disease resistance and hardiness more than almost anything else, although many people might opt for optimizing some things with unknown consequences. I'm just saying that idea of geen manipulation shows another problematical assumption you are making that the only way genetic material will get passed on is the old-fashioned way.

Memetic/cultural evolution is also happening at the level of "memes", as we see here on slashdot all the time, and quite rapidly, much faster than genetic evolution. But ask yourself, which of the memes you carry around in your head (including the one you just propagated) are more beneficial to your body as well as the communities that body is part of, and which are more parasitic or cancerous? And what does it take to have a healthy mental immune system?