Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, one of Orange County’s largest hospitals, has implemented the latest in liver cancer treatment technology.
The HistoSonics Edison Histotripsy System uses ultrasound energy to selectively destroy cancer cells, similar to the way a wine glass shatters at the right frequency, Chief of Interventional Radiology and Interventional Oncology Dr. Trushar Patel said.
“This is actually mechanically bursting open cells, whether they be tumor or tissue,” Patel told the Business Journal.
The new, noninvasive technology received Food and Drug Administration approval in 2023 and is currently being investigated to treat other cancer applications.
Earlier this year, HistoSonics Inc. announced the first patient with a kidney tumor was treated with the system.
Hoag has also recruited Dr. Kenneth Chang to be the new executive medical director of Hoag’s Digestive Health Institute (DHI).
Chang, one of the world’s preeminent experts on stomachs, joins Hoag from the University of California, Irvine, where he built and launched UCI’s Comprehensive Digestive Disease Center and the Digestive Health Institute.
He won the Business Journal’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2021.
A Non-Lethal Treatment to Healthy Cells
Interested in bringing the technology to Hoag, Patel reached out to Minnesota-based medical device startup HistoSonics in 2019.
“It’s been a long process in the sense that we’ve been evaluating this technology for a while, but as soon as we decided that it would be appropriate, we were able to move extremely quickly,” Patel said.
Hoag is just one of three centers in California to offer this technology, according to Patel. Besides Hoag, Providence Mission Hospital and UCI provide this system.
In terms of liver cancer, Patel said that Hoag has been shifting away from surgery to more focal therapies such as MRI-guided radiation therapy and percutaneous ablation.
“The downside of that is you get radiation to other parts of the body that are sort of in front of the cancer,” Patel said.
Histotripsy, on the other hand, is said to be non-lethal to healthy cells and doesn’t require a single incision.
Before the procedure, the system uses ultrasound imaging to visualize the lesion and target it. Patients then go under anesthesia and the procedure can last anywhere from 15 minutes to about an hour depending on the size of the treatment area.
Due to the minimal side effects, patients can go home the same day and return to normal by the evening, Patel said.
Addressing Unmet Health Needs of the Community
When Chang decided to make the leap from UCI to Hoag, he said he wanted to join an organization that had the resources to help his “dreams for the community” be realized in a shorter amount of time.
“This is a community-based, not-for-profit organization that is no longer part of a larger network, is now independent and can charter its own destiny,” Chang told the Business Journal.
At Hoag, he will oversee 18 full-time faculty and more than 20 community gastrointestinal physicians affiliated with the institute.
“My role is to cast a vision that all of the physicians and providers can believe in, support and move towards,” Chang said.
One of Chang’s visions is to establish four centers of excellence to “address the unmet health needs of our community,” including a weight and metabolic center to help treat obesity, diabetes and other weight-related issues.
The other three centers will focus on heartburn and gut health, colon health and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and gastrointestinal oncology, where histotripsy will fall under.
Hoag counts eight Digestive Health Institute locations in Orange County with four in Newport Beach and four in Irvine. Chang said they plan to launch more satellite locations further south in Aliso Viejo and San Clemente as well.
“These institutes will be accessible throughout the entire county, so you don’t have to go to Irvine to see someone within DHI,” Chang said.
