Abstract
Irreversible Electroporation (IRE) is a promising clinical ablation therapy for the treatment of cancer, but issues with the generation of heat must be solved before safe and effective clinical results can be obtained. In the present study, we show that a metal stent will not be noticeably heated up by IRE pulses under typical clinical conditions. Derivation of this non-intuitive result required the application of Maxwell's equations to the tissue-stent configuration. Subsequently, straightforward and arguably accurate simplifications of the electric field generated by two needles in tissue surrounding a metal stent have enabled the modeling of the heat generation and the transport of heat in IRE procedures. Close to a stent that is positioned in between two needles, temperatures in a typical run of 100 s, 1 Hz pulses, may remain notably lower than without the stent. This is the explanation of the experimentally observed low temperature rim of viable tissue around the stent, whereas all tissue was non-viable without stent, found in tissue model experiments.
Highlights
Irreversible Electroporation (IRE) is a promising clinical ablation therapy for the treatment of cancer, in particular when tumors are located near vulnerable structures
The dashed line centred at the origin represents the metal stent with radius a = 2.5 mm; computations both with and without the stent will be performed and discussed
We have shown that a metal stent will not be noticeably heated up by pulses applied in clinical irreversible electroporation, a counterintuitive result that required application of Maxwell’s equations to the tissue-stent configuration
Summary
Irreversible Electroporation (IRE) is a promising clinical ablation therapy for the treatment of cancer, in particular when tumors are located near vulnerable structures. Cells are killed in a targeted region, without damaging the collagen and other interstitial tissue constituents. This localized treatment makes it possible to preserve critical structures, like major vasculature and ductal systems [3,4,5]. This sparing of critical structures is the primary characteristic that distinguishes IRE from other local therapies [4]. The two needles are usually in parallel; reference [5] gives figures of this and other needle geometries
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