Toward a clinical real time tissue ablation technology: combining electroporation and electrolysis (E2).

Background: Percutaneous image-guided tissue ablation (IGA) plays a growing role in the clinical management of solid malignancies. Electroporation is used for IGA in several modalities: irreversible electroporation (IRE), and reversible electroporation with chemotoxic drugs, called electrochemotherapy (ECT). It was shown that the combination of electrolysis and electroporation-E2-affords tissue ablation with greater efficiency, that is, lower voltages, lower energy and shorter procedure times than IRE and without the need for chemotoxic additives as in ECT.

The combination of electroporation and electrolysis (E2) employing different electrode arrays for ablation of large tissue volumes.

Background: The combination of electroporation with electrolysis (E2) has previously been introduced as a novel tissue ablation technique. E2 allows the utilization of a wide parameter range and may therefore be a suitable technology for development of tissue-specific application protocols. Previous studies have implied that it is possible to achieve big lesions in liver in a very short time.

Single exponential decay waveform; a synergistic combination of electroporation and electrolysis (E2) for tissue ablation.

Background: Electrolytic ablation and electroporation based ablation are minimally invasive, non-thermal surgical technologies that employ electrical currents and electric fields to ablate undesirable cells in a volume of tissue. In this study, we explore the attributes of a new tissue ablation technology that simultaneously delivers a synergistic combination of electroporation and electrolysis (E2).

Method: A new device that delivers a controlled dose of electroporation field and electrolysis currents in the form of a single exponential decay waveform (EDW) was applied to the pig liver, and the effect of various parameters on the extent of tissue ablation was examined with histology.

Synergistic Combination of Electrolysis and Electroporation for Tissue Ablation.

Electrolysis, electrochemotherapy with reversible electroporation, nanosecond pulsed electric fields and irreversible electroporation are valuable non-thermal electricity based tissue ablation technologies. This paper reports results from the first large animal study of a new non-thermal tissue ablation technology that employs "Synergistic electrolysis and electroporation" (SEE). The goal of this pre-clinical study is to expand on earlier studies with small animals and use the pig liver to establish SEE treatment parameters of clinical utility.

A Vivens Ex Vivo Study on the Synergistic Effect of Electrolysis and Freezing on the Cell Nucleus.

Freezing-cryosurgery, and electrolysis-electrochemical therapy (EChT), are two important minimally invasive surgery tissue ablation technologies. Despite major advantages they also have some disadvantages. Cryosurgery cannot induce cell death at high subzero freezing temperatures and requires multiple freeze thaw cycles, while EChT requires high concentrations of electrolytic products-which makes it a lengthy procedure.

Electrical breakdown in tissue electroporation.

Electroporation, the permeabilization of the cell membrane by brief, high electric fields, has become an important technology in medicine for diverse application ranging from gene transfection to tissue ablation. There is ample anecdotal evidence that the clinical application of electroporation is often associated with loud sounds and extremely high currents that exceed the devices design limit after which the devices cease to function. The goal of this paper is to elucidate and quantify the biophysical and biochemical basis for this phenomenon.

Electrolytic Effects During Tissue Ablation by Electroporation.

Nonthermal irreversible electroporation is a new tissue ablation technique that consists of applying pulsed electric fields across cells to induce cell death by creating permanent defects in the cell membrane. Nonthermal irreversible electroporation is of interest because it allows treatment near sensitive tissue structures such as blood vessels and nerves. Two recent articles report that electrolytic reaction products at electrodes can be combined with electroporation pulses to augment and optimize tissue ablation.