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World J Gastrointest Surg. Aug 27, 2015; 7(8): 138-144
Published online Aug 27, 2015. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v7.i8.138
Irreversible electroporation and the pancreas: What we know and where we are going?
Shamar J Young
Shamar J Young, Department of Diagnostic Radiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32601, United States
Author contributions: Young SJ solely contributed to this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Shamar J Young has not received fees for serving as a speaker or advisor for any company. He has no current ongoing grant activity and owns no patents.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Shamar J Young, MD, Department of Diagnostic Radiology, University of Florida, 1600 SW Archer Rd, PO Box 100374, Gainesville, FL 32601, United States. yosham@radiology.ufl.edu
Telephone: +1-352-2193604
Received: April 20, 2015
Peer-review started: April 24, 2015
First decision: May 13, 2015
Revised: June 2, 2015
Accepted: June 30, 2015
Article in press: July 2, 2015
Published online: August 27, 2015
Processing time: 133 Days and 15 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Pancreatic adenocarcinoma continues to have a poor prognosis and as such there is considerable interest in pioneering new techniques. Ablation holds promise in this area, however, the earliest studies looked at thermal ablation techniques which resulted in high morbidity rates. Irreversible electroporation, a relatively new technique, produces apoptosis instead of liquefactive necrosis and preclinical data shows it does not destroy scaffolding cells such as bile ducts and blood vessels. These characteristics have made it of interest in the setting of pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The available clinical data as well as the basic principles of this new technique are reviewed here.