Yoav Medan: Ultrasound surgery -- healing without cuts

142,380 views ・ 2011-12-08

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
Over the last 13 years --
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one, three, 13 years --
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I've been part of an exceptional team at InSightec in Israel
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and partners around the world
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for taking this idea, this concept,
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noninvasive surgery,
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from the research lab to routine clinical use.
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And this is what I'll tell you about.
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13 years --
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for some of you, you can empathize with that number.
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For me, today, on this date,
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it's like a second bar mitzvah experience.
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(Laughter)
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So this dream
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is really enabled
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by the convergence
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of two known technologies.
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One is the focused ultrasound,
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and the other one is the
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vision-enabled magnetic resonance imaging.
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So let's first talk about focused ultrasound.
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And I hold in my hand
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a tissue-mimicking phantom.
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It is made out of silicon.
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It is transparent, made just for you.
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So you see, it's all intact,
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completely transparent.
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I'll take you now to the acoustic lab.
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You see the phantom within the aquarium.
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This is a setup I put in a physics lab.
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On the right-hand side,
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you see an ultrasonic transducer.
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So the ultrasonic transducer
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emits basically an ultrasonic beam
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that focuses inside the phantom.
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Okay, when you hear the click,
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this is when the energy starts to emit
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and you see a little lesion form
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inside the phantom.
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Okay, so everything around it
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is whole and intact.
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It's just a lesion formed inside.
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So think about, this is in your brain.
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We need to reach a target inside the brain.
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We can do it without harming any tissue.
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So this is, I think,
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the first kosher Hippocratic surgical system.
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(Laughter)
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Okay, so let's talk a little bit about ultrasound,
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the force of ultrasound.
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You know all about imaging, right, ultrasound imaging.
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And you know also about lithotripsy --
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breaking kidney stones.
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But ultrasound can be shaped
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to be anything in between,
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because it's a mechanical force.
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Basically, it's a force acting on a tissue
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that it transverses.
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So you can change the intensity, the frequency,
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the duration, the pulse shape of the ultrasound
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to create anything
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from an airbrush to a hammer.
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And I am going to show you
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multiple applications in the medical field
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that can be enabled
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just by focusing,
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physically focusing.
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So this idea
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of harnessing focused ultrasound to treat lesions in the brain
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is not new at all.
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When I was born, this idea was already conceived
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by pioneers such as the Fry brothers
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and Lars Leksell,
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who is know actually
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as the inventor of the gammaknife.
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But you may not know
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that he tried to perform lobotomies in the brain,
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noninvasively,
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with focused ultrasound in the '50s.
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He failed,
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so he then invented the gammaknife.
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And it makes you ponder
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why those pioneers failed.
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And there was something fundamental
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that they were missing.
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They were missing the vision.
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It wasn't until the invention of the MR
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and really the integration of MR
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with focused ultrasound
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that we could get the feedback --
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both the anatomical and the physiological
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in order to have a completely noninvasive, closed-loop
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surgical procedure.
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So this is how it looks, you know,
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the operating room of the future today.
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This is an MR suite with a focused ultrasound system.
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And I will give you several examples.
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So the first one is in the brain.
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One of the neurological conditions
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that can be treated with focused ultrasound
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are movement disorders,
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like Parkinson's or essential tremor.
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What is typical to those conditions,
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to essential tremor for example,
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is inability
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to drink or eat cereal or soup
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without spilling everything all over you,
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or write legibly so people can understand it,
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and be really independent in your life
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without the help of others.
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So I'd like you to meet John.
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John is a retired professor of history
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from Virginia.
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So he suffered from essential tremor for many years.
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And medication didn't help him anymore.
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And many of those patients refused to undergo surgery
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to have people cut into their brain.
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And about four or five months ago,
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he underwent an experimental procedure.
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It is approved under an FDAIDE
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at the University of Virginia
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in Charlottesville
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using focused ultrasound
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to ablate a point in his thalamus.
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And this is his handwriting.
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"On June 20th," if you can read it,
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"2011."
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This is his handwriting
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on the morning of the treatment
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before going into the MR
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So now I'll take you through
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[what] a typical procedure like that looks like,
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[what] noninvasive surgery looks like.
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So we put the patient on the MR table.
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We attach a transducer, in this case, to the brain,
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but if it will be a different organ,
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it will be a different transducer attached to the patient.
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And the physician
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will then take a regular MR scan.
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And the objective of that?
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I don't have a pointer here,
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but you see the green, sort of rectangle or trapezoid?
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This is the sort of general area of the treatment.
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It's a safety boundary
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around the target.
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It's a target in the thalamus.
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So once those pictures are acquired
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and the physician has drawn
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all the necessary safety limits and so on,
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he selects basically a point --
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you see the round point in the middle where the cursor is --
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and he presses this blue button called "sonicate."
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We call this instance of injecting the energy,
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we call it sonication.
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The only handwork the physician does here
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is moving a mouse.
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This is the only device he needs in this treatment.
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So he presses "sonicate," and this is what happens.
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You see the transducer, the light blue.
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There's water in between the skull and the transducer.
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And it does this burst of energy.
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It elevates the temperature.
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We first need to verify
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that we are on target.
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So the first sonication
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is at lower energy.
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It doesn't do any damage,
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but it elevates the temperature
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by a few degrees.
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And one of the unique capabilities
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that we leverage with the MR
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is the ability to measure temperature noninvasively.
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This is really a unique capability of the MR.
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It is not being used
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in regular diagnostic imaging.
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But here we can get
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both the anatomical imaging and the temperature maps in real time.
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And you can see the points there on the graph.
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The temperature was raised
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to 43 degrees C temporarily.
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This doesn't cause any damage.
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But the point is we are right on target.
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So once the physician verifies
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that the focus spot is on the target he has chosen,
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then we move to perform
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a full-energy ablation
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like you see here.
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And you see the temperature rises
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to like 55 to 60 degrees C.
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If you do it for more than a second,
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it's enough to basically destroy
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the proteins of the cells.
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This is the outcome from a patient perspective --
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same day after the treatment.
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This is an immediate relief.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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John is one of [about] a dozen
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very heroic, courageous people
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who volunteered for the study.
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And you have to understand
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what is in people's mind
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when they are willing to take the risk.
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And this is a quote from John after he wrote it.
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He said, "Miraculous."
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And his wife said, "This is the happiest moment of my life."
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And you wonder why.
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I mean, one of the messages I like to carry over
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is, what about defending quality of life?
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I mean, those people lose their independence.
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They are dependent on others.
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And John today is fully independent.
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He returned to a normal life routine.
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And he also plays golf,
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like you do in Virginia
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when you are retired.
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Okay, so you can see here the spot.
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It's like three millimeters in the middle of the brain.
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There's no damage outside.
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He suffers from no neurodeficit.
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There's no recovery needed, no nothing.
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He's back to his normal life.
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Let's move now
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to a more painful subject.
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Pain is something
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that can make your life miserable.
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And people are suffering from all kinds of pain
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like neuropathic pain, lower-back pain
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and cancer pain from bone metastases,
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when the metastases get to your bones,
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sometimes they are very painful.
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All those I've indicated
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have already been shown
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to be successfully treated
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by focused ultrasound
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relieving the pain, again, very fast.
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And I would like to tell you
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about PJ.
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He's a 78 year-old farmer
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who suffered from -- how should I say it? --
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it's called pain in the butt.
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He had metastases in his right buttock,
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and he couldn't sit
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even with medication.
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He had to forgo all the farm activities.
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He was treated with radiation therapy,
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state-of-the-art radiation therapy,
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but it didn't help.
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Many patients like that favor radiation therapy.
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And again, he volunteered
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to a pivotal study
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that we ran worldwide,
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also in the U.S.
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And his wife actually took him.
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They drove like three hours
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from their farm to the hospital.
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He had to sit on a cushion,
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stand still, not move,
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because it was very painful.
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He took the treatment,
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and on the way back,
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he drove the truck by himself.
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So again, this is an immediate relief.
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And you have to understand
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what those people feel
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and what their family experiences
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when it happens.
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He returned again
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to his daily routine on the farm.
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He rides his tractor.
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He rides his horse to their mountain cabin regularly.
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And he has been very happy.
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But now, you ask me,
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but what about war, the war on cancer?
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Show us some primary cancer.
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What can be done there?
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So I have good news and bad news.
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The good news: there's a lot that can be done.
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And it has been shown actually outside of the U.S.
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And doing that in the U.S.
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is very painful.
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I don't see, without this nation
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taking it as some collective will
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or something that is a national goal to make that happen,
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it will not happen.
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And it's not just because of regulation;
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it's because of the amount of money needed
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under the current evidence-based medicine
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and the size of trials and so on
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to make it happen.
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So the first two applications
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are breast cancer and prostate cancer.
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They were the first to be treated by focused ultrasound.
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And we have better-than-surgery results in breasts.
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But I have a message for the men here.
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We heard here yesterday Quyen
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talking about the adverse event trait
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in prostate cancer.
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There is a unique opportunity now
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with focused ultrasound guided by MR,
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because we can actually think about
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prostate lumpectomy --
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treating just the focal lesion
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and not removing the whole gland,
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and by that, avoiding all the issues
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with potency and incontinence.
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Well, there are other cancer tumors in the abdomen --
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quite lethal, very lethal actually --
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pancreas, liver, kidney.
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The challenge there
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with a breathing and awake patient --
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and in all our treatments,
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the patient is awake and conscious
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and speaks with the physician --
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is you have to teach the MR some tricks
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how to do it in real time.
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And this will take time.
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This will take two years.
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But I have now a message to the ladies.
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And this is, in 2004,
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the FDA has approved MR-guided focused ultrasounds
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for the treatment of symptomatic uterine fibroids.
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Women suffer from that disease.
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All those tumors
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have heavy bleeding during periods,
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abdominal pressure, back pain,
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frequent urination.
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And sometimes, they cannot even conceive and become pregnant
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because of the fibroid.
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14:38
This is Frances.
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She was diagnosed with a grapefruit-sized fibroid.
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This is a big fibroid.
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She was offered a hysterectomy,
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14:46
but this is an inconceivable proposition
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14:48
for someone who wants to keep her pregnancy option.
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14:51
So she elected to undergo a focused ultrasound procedure
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in 2008.
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And in 2010, she became a first-time mother to a healthy baby.
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So new life was born.
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(Applause)
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So in conclusion,
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I'd like to leave you with actually four messages.
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One is, think about the amount
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of suffering that is saved
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from patients undergoing noninvasive surgery,
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15:19
and also the economical and emotional burden
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15:23
removed from their families and communities
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and the society at large --
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and I think also from their physicians, by the way.
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And the other thing I would like you to think about
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is the new type of relationship
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between physician and patients
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when you have a patient on the table
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15:47
[who] is awake and can even monitor the treatment.
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15:50
In all our treatments,
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the patient holds a stop sonication button.
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He can stop the surgery at any moment.
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And with that note,
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I would like to thank you for listening.
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(Applause)
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