Message from the director

Welcome to the UC Irvine Health Ablative Oncology Center. Here at UC Irvine Medical Center and the the UC Irvine Health School of Medicine, we are working as a team to do something that is truly unique. We are redefining the term "minimally invasive surgery" as it applies to cancer treatment. We have established the first multidisciplinary center whose mission is to cure patients with all types of cancer with the least invasive methods clinically available. 

Specialists from urology, interventional radiology, hepatobiliary surgery, orthopaedics, cardiothoracic surgery, anesthesiology, gynecology and pathology work hand-in-hand at the center to advance treatment methods, using a variety of technologies to ablate — or destroy — malignant tissue with extreme cold, heat and other forms of energy that often are delivered through the skin with little or no need for an incision. 

At our center, surgical subspecialists work in tandem with interventional radiologists, giving patients the benefit of their combined expertise and providing optimum care. I believe that this multidisciplinary approach will further advance the field of ablation treatment, allowing UC Irvine to offer cancer treatments with greater efficacy, fewer complications, little or no scarring and faster recovery time.

Ablative therapies represent a revolutionary change, a new paradigm, if you will. We’re not cutting something out, but rather precisely targeting and destroying cancer cells within the body.

Most surgeons and physicians are comfortable with the concept of surgically removing a tumor, method that has been at the center of cancer care for more than a century. It has taken a big mental leap to think of treating the malignant tissue ablatively within the body, and this has been a challenge for some contemporary surgeons.

However, solid date now demonstrates that for some tumor types, ablative therapy represents a very effective and less invasive way to treat cancer.

The beauty of ablation is that it truly offers a new level of minimally invasive treatment for our patients. The ability to minimize a patient's pain, hospital stay and expense — and time away from family and work — with a treatment that is well suited to the biology of their disease is remarkable.

Our center's collaborative team of highly skilled physicians, working with the best technologies available, offers patients effective, minimally invasive cancer cures that is unparalleled.

Dr. Jaime Landman, chair of UC Irvine's Department of Urology and director of the Ablative Oncology Center, can be reached at (714) 456-3330 or at landmanj@uci.edu.