Is High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound an Alternative to the Surgical Approach in Primary Hyperparathyroidism? Our Preliminary Experience

Seance of wednesday 16 october 2013 (LE FUTUR D'UNE CHIRURGIE A LA VITESSE DES ULTRASONS)

Abstract

HIFU is a method for non-invasively inducing thermal lesions in living tissue. Depending on the type of tissue and the energy, the biological effect may be low temperature hyperthermia, tissue (collagen) shrinkage, coagulation or lethal overheating. Many applications have been reported for HIFU treatment of cancers of the prostate, uterine fibroids, some glaucoma, thyroid nodules. It was therefore natural to propose this method to treat parathyroid adenomas of hyperparathyroidism. The results reported appear to raise some enthusiasm that justified a number of European teams are interested. We report our experience of four experiments carried out in order to study the histological changes in parathyroid adenomas after high-energy ultrasound (HIFU). Our histological results showed that parathyroid treated HIFU causes partial necrosis of treated glands, but the destruction of parathyroid adenomas seems premature because difficult technical conditions achievement joins a recurrent palsy. Finally, taking into account the inclusion and exclusion factors the number of candidates that may be used is low. Actually, this technique cannot now compete with other non-invasive methods such as adenomectomies performed under local anesthesia on an outpatient basis, with a short incision almost always invisible after six months, burdened with a lower morbidity than 1%, achieved with successful in over 95% of cases, which allows an histological analysis of the gland.