Cryotherapy, which literally means cold therapy, is a minimally invasive technique that involves using extremely cold temperatures to treat specific conditions by freezing and therefore destroying abnormal or diseased tissue. An instrument called a cryoprobe – a needle-like therapy probe, cooled with substances like liquid nitrogen, liquid nitrous oxide, or compressed argon gas – is used for injections into the diseased tissue beneath the skin that is being treated. The intense cold freezes and destroys the targeted tissue, which is then removed. Cryotherapy can also be administered using ice packs, coolant sprays, ice baths, or ice massage. Cryotherapy can treat one specific area, or used to treat the entire body, known as whole body cryotherapy (WBC), which involves immersing the entire person, except their head, in extremely cold air for several minutes. The theory behind cryotherapy is that living tissue, whether healthy or diseased, cannot survive when exposed to extremely cold temperatures and will die. Several steps are involved in the death of a diseased cell, and tumors are typically frozen and then thawed repeatedly before the doctor removes the abnormal tissue.