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Comment by RedShift1 | Hacker News Reader

Once you've destroyed the tumor, how do you get it out of the body?

https://www.statnews.com/2024/06/22/hank-green-pissing-out-c...

Watching Hank Green's YouTube video where he found out that his cloudy pee was cancer leaving his body, he was surprised that doctors don't tell you to expect it. It can be such a morale boost.

The recycling of dead cells is a normal biological process the same thing happens when they use radiation to kill cancer cells

If I interpret the article correctly, the ultrasound energy does two things: it effectively destroys the cancer cells by overheating them, and it physically breaks apart the tumour. Your immune system can further break up and get rid of dead cells the way it deals with normal dead cells.

Won't there still be some broken up live cells that can now migrate around the body and cause cancer in other areas?

This was an issue with uterine morcellation; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morcellator. Per the article, though:

> Some researchers have raised concerns about histotripsy potentially seeding new cancer growths as tumours are broken up inside the body, meaning they can be transported to other areas. That fear, however, hasn't borne out in animal studies so far.

Yeah I wondered about that myself. And I wonder if radiation therapy might not have the same potential issue? But maybe there's something in the way they perform the treatment to reduce the risk of that happening? Not sure.

Usually, it suffices to initiate apoptosis, the self-destruction mechanisms of the cells.

I doubt ultrasound would trigger apoptosis in cancer cells, one of the reasons they're cancerous is that they refuse to commit suicide when they should.

It heats them until enough damage is done that they die regardless.

So more like necrosis, not apoptosis. Maybe non-biologists are not aware, but apoptosis is not just cell death.

Or just tears them apart in the case of Histosonics.

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