Feasibility study for thermal protection by microencapsulated phase change micro/nanoparticles during cryosurgery

Abstract

Although considerable progresses have been made in cryosurgery to treat tumor, thermal injury to collateral structures is still a known complication of cryosurgery. In this study, a new method was proposed to prevent the healthy tissue around the cancerous tissue from thermal injury by microencapsulated phase change micro/nanoparticles, in which the phase change materials (PCMs) with large latent heat and low thermal conductivity are microencapsulated by liposome and delivered to the healthy tissue by mainline, arterial injection, hypodermic injection or direct injection. The three-dimensional transient temperature field in human body containing one tumor and embedded PCMs in the surrounding healthy tissue was numerically studied. The effects of the PCMs concentration, the phase change temperature, the temperature range near the phase change point, the latent heat and the PCMs distribution (especially the number of sides that PCMs cover, and the distance between the PCMs domain and the cancerous domain) were further discussed. The computational analysis showed that embedding PCMs in the healthy tissue around the cancerous tissue can significantly reduce the cryoinjury to the surrounding healthy tissue. The result also suggested that not embedding the PCMs directly adjacent to the cancerous tissue will help to improve the protection efficacy.