Can microwave in situ inactivation treat malignant tumors of the spine?

Surgical treatment of malignant tumors of the spine is very difficult due to the special anatomical characteristics. In the past, due to the limitations of surgical techniques and instruments, only decompression and stabilization surgery could be performed for malignant tumors of the spine, while the tumor itself often could not be effectively resected. As a result, the tumor continues to grow after surgery, which is ultimately life-threatening, and the continued growth of the tumor can soon lead to new nerve compression or failure of internal fixation due to invasion of the tumor into the surrounding vertebral body. Therefore, in order to improve the treatment of spinal malignancies, in addition to decompression and internal fixation, complete resection of the tumor is necessary to avoid or reduce the chance of local recurrence, which is the concept of removing the tumor outside the safe margin in surgical oncology. However, for spinal tumors, this is almost impossible to achieve with conventional surgery. Although the concept of total en bloc spondylectomy has been proposed by some surgeons, it is very difficult to perform total spondylectomy, which often causes life-threatening or a series of complications due to long operation time and uncontrollable intraoperative bleeding. How to ensure complete removal of tumor cells while improving the safety of surgery has been the direction of our exploration. Recently, by applying the technique of in situ microwave tumor inactivation to the surgical treatment of malignant tumors of the spine, we have initially solved this problem. In addition to the traditional decompression and internal fixation surgery, microwave energy is introduced into the tumor center of the vertebral body using a specially designed microwave antenna to kill the tumor cells through microwave heat generation, and by adjusting the direction and depth of the microwave antenna and the time of microwave inactivation, the tumor cells in all corners of the vertebral body can be killed in almost all directions, thus achieving “The main advantages of this technology are The main advantages of this technique are: 1. Through in situ microwave inactivation of tumor tissues, the killing of tumor tissues can be achieved on the basis of inoperative total vertebral body resection, thus achieving or approaching the effect of total vertebral body resection, thus obtaining good local control and avoiding or reducing the possibility of recurrence after surgery; 2. After scraping, the bone shell at the edge of the lesioned vertebral body is preserved, which facilitates reconstruction and internal fixation, resulting in high postoperative spinal stability and the ability to get out of bed at an early stage.