General Electric's new I-MRI takes technology a step further. The I-MRI's most obvious advantage is that, during surgery, the physician may instantly detect whether all of a cancerous growth is being destroyed, Dr. Sewell said. We've done all of these procedures with no major complications, nor significant pain. Usually, after this surgery, the incision where the probe was inserted requires only a Band-Aid or a single suture to close it. Dr. Sewell noted that every patient has gone home within a day after surgery, except one patient, who stayed in the hospital for unrelated medical problems.
Recovery time is only a few days at home.
Moreover, the kidneys apparently sustained no damage from the surgery itself. Medical costs rise, of course, with more time spent in the hospital. He and Dr. Sewell, however, pointed out that even if this new procedure proves as effective as total kidney removal in eradicating kidney cancer, there remains a possibility, with either type of surgery, that some patients already have hidden metastasized cancer elsewhere in the body that can't initially be detected. One of those investigative procedures is to destroy lung cancer, the other is to treat non-cancerous fibroid tumors of the uterus. Dr. Sewell recently performed the lung cancer procedure in China for a controlled study.