Effects of tandem shock waves combined with photosan and cytostatics on the growth of tumours.

Shock waves, pressure waves manifested as a sharp increase in positive pressure followed by a decrease and the negative part of the wave, are not only used to treat concrements in medicine. Recently, research has been focused on the possibility of their use for damaging the tumour tissue. In contrast to concrements, which are different from the surrounding tissue by their acoustic impedance, the tumour tissue has the same acoustic impedance as the surrounding soft tissue. Therefore, we have developed a new source of shock waves, which is based on the principle of multichannel discharge. This new source generates two successive shock waves (tandem shock waves). The first shock creates acoustic non-homogeneity and cavitations in the tissue, and the second shock is damped in it. In this work we demonstrated the effect of tandem shock waves on the muscle tissue in depth. The damage is shown on the images from the magnetic resonance imaging and histological sections. In the further part of the experiment, we investigated the in vivo effects of tandem shock waves in combination with Photosan and cisplatin on the tumour tissue. The application of tandem shock waves resulted in the inhibition of tumour growth, compared with controls, in both parts of the experiment. The largest inhibition effect was observed in the groups of tandem shock waves combined with Photosan and in the second part with cisplatin.