Introduction: Undergoing surgery takes a toll on the body due to the invasiveness of the surgical procedures. Surgeons try to create new, less invasive methods and techniques in order to shorten the recovery time and to minimize potential risks for their patients. Focused ultrasound (FU) has the potential to solve all of the problems connected with the invasiveness of the surgical procedures. The ultrasound beams can be focused on a specific target (tumor) by using radiators, lenses, or reflectors. In most surgical cases an MR is used to guide the focused ultrasound and to ensure correct targeting by obtaining thermal images during sonication.
Material and Methods: The information for this overview was gathered using the search platform of PubMed and using the keywords: focused; ultrasound; surgery; oncology; surgical; methods. The articles used in this review are all written after the year 2010 and have been published in peer-review journals with impact factor.
Results: FU is an extremely effective and efficient method in removing the targeted tissue. This is due to various damaging effects of the FU. Some of these effects are creating heat on the targeted area, causing necrosis, or creating microbubbles, which upon collapsing create a shockwave that mechanically damages the tissue. Due to these effects FU is becoming more widely used.
Conclusion: Using FU, surgeons could minimize the risks for their patients while at the same time increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the procedure. Whilst focused ultrasound surgery is not fully developed and more research is needed, it shows the potential to become the gold standard in some surgical procedures.
