MENU
"Haifu Knife® UsgHIFUa," also known as "Focused Ultrasound Knife," is the abbreviation for "Ultrasound-guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound Ablation." It is a novel technique that can destroy tumors in the body without incising the skin, without puncturing, and without bleeding, also referred to by some as "non-invasive surgery."
As a non-invasive treatment, the principle of "Haifu Knife® UsgHIFUa" is similar to how sunlight can be focused through a magnifying glass. It emits diffuse ultrasonic energy from outside the body, which safely penetrates normal tissues and precisely focuses on the target area inside the body. Leveraging the inherent properties of ultrasound—such as thermal and cavitation effects—it instantaneously raises the temperature of the diseased tissue in the target area to over 60°C, causing irreversible coagulative necrosis, while causing almost no harm to tissues in the acoustic pathway or outside the target area.
The Haifu Knife® UsgHIFUa is a technology that focuses low-energy ultrasound waves from outside the body to form a highly concentrated energy area inside the body, and through thermal and cavitation effects, induces irreversible coagulative necrosis in the tissues within this energy-concentrated area. It is widely used in tumor treatment.
For HIFU treatment, when the temperature is maintained at 60˚C for more than 1 second or an equivalent thermal dose is applied, the goal of ablation can be achieved, leading to protein denaturation and causing irreversible coagulative necrosis in the target tissue. Due to its high degree of focusing, HIFU treatment is characterized by ablating only the target tissue without damaging the surrounding normal tissue. Histopathological findings reveal that there is a clear boundary of less than 50µm between the coagulative necrosis area and the surrounding area, containing only 5-7 layers of cells. This indicates that HIFU has high precision and controllability in tissue damage.
Cavitation effect is another key mechanical effect in the HIFU thermal ablation process besides the thermal effect. When ultrasound acts on a liquid medium, the tiny bubble nuclei within the liquid are activated by the ultrasound, undergoing a series of processes including oscillation, growth, compression, and collapse, known as acoustic cavitation or simply cavitation. The presence of the cavitation effect causes high-intensity ultrasound to form bubbles at the target site, and the rupture of these bubbles can generate high-pressure shock waves (20-30,000 bars) and high temperatures (2,000-5,000 K) in the surrounding tiny areas, damaging the tissues within that small vicinity and further enhancing the ablative effect of HIFU on tissues.
The Haifu Knife® Usg-HIFUa has been used in clinical treatment for over 20 years, securing more than 500 international intellectual property rights. It has been introduced into 30 countries or regions, including China, the UK, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea, with a global cumulative total of over 240,000 treatment cases. This medical procedure has been incorporated into medical treatment guidelines such as the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guidance, the Hong Kong College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (HKCOG) OG Guideline, and the Chinese Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology's "Chinese Expert Consensus on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Uterine Fibroids" and "Chinese Expert Consensus on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Adenomyosis."
