New Delhi: When a patient gets a glioblastoma diagnosis, they often have to prepare themselves for an invasive open-skull surgery and the long recovery involved in treating the most aggressive forms of brain cancer. But neurosurgeons are increasingly turning to another treatment option — laser interstitial thermal therapy.
Laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) is a minimally invasive alternative to brain surgery, where a thin laser probe is inserted into a small opening in the skull. Using an MRI, a surgeon guides the probe and uses heat to destroy tumour tissue while sparing the healthy brain tissue around it.
Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine published an analysis of patient outcomes from LITT to highlight that the technology has the potential to significantly improve healthcare. The analysis was published on 17 August in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
“Our goal is to both extend the survival of our brain tumor patients and improve the quality of their lives. This analysis identifies the factors that lead to the best outcomes. This critical new information will help us find opportunities for patients to benefit the most from this therapy,” said the study’s principal investigator and lead author Eric C Leuthardt, professor of Neurological Surgery at WashU Medicine, in a press release.
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What the study found
LITT is offered to patients with recurrent or inoperable tumors that are often in places which are difficult to access. Patients with such tumors might hesitate to opt for the conventional surgery since it comes with the risk of complications and a long recovery.
Researchers analysed 787 patients that had been treated at 25 US medical centres between 2015 and 2023. The average age of the patients was about 59 years and each of them had spent about 32 hours in the hospital for their treatment. Nearly 62 per cent of them had avoided being admitted to the ICU.
Researchers highlighted that this was the largest cohort of LITT-treated brain-tumour patients who had been studied in the past years. Among patients with a new diagnosis of glioblastoma, if 91 per cent of the tumor was ablated using LITT, most survived at least 2.1 years from the time they were diagnosed. This is a few months longer than the 1.5 years of survival linked to a standard surgical resection of the tumor.
However, this does not establish that LITT is better than conventional surgery since there are yet to be randomised control trials and comparisons between the two approaches.
It is important to note that LITT is not new. It has been used in neurosurgery for years and WashU has been performing laser neurosurgery for over a decade. However, such studies add to existing literature, making LITT a more attractive treatment.
Recent research also shows that LITT can do more than just destroy tumors. A study in July 2026 suggested that LITT could alter the blood brain barrier too, allowing researchers to potentially deliver drugs or immune therapies to tumours.
“We are shifting the entire framework of how we handle brain tumors. When patients are told they have months to live, having the option of a low-risk procedure that gets them back home to their families in just over a day is profoundly meaningful,” said Leuthardt.