JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A local hospital is using new technology to remove liver cancer without invasive surgery.
It’s a word that no one ever wants to hear.
“He found the cancer,” Paul Montgomery said.
In 2022, Paul Montgomery got some blood work done and discovered he had liver cancer. He was sent to Surgical Oncologist Dr. William Sumner at Ascension St. Vincent’s and underwent a five-hour surgery to remove the cancer. But in September 2025, it came back.
“They found a spot on my liver,” Montgomery said. “He decided to go ahead and do this new type of machine they have.”
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That new machine he’s talking about is HistoSonic’s Edison System, which uses Histotripsy technology to remove liver cancer.
“Histotripsy is a robotic arm that uses sound waves to create bubbles that destroy cells at a very defined small focal point, and that robotic arm,” Dr. William Sumner said. “And then that robotic arm moves that focal point around to destroy everything in a given area that you’ve set.
We had a chance to check out the new technology ourselves.
Dr. Sumner says the procedure is non-invasive, and it typically takes less than 40 minutes to complete…in Paul Montgomery’s case, Montgomery says it took around 13 minutes.
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“When they were doing the surgery, I even asked the doctor, ‘When are you going to start?’ He said, ‘hey, we finished,’” Montgomery said. “I didn’t even know I even had the surgery at all.”
Paul Montegomery had this procedure done in December 2025; since then, he’s been cancer-free, but he is still being monitored.
Right now, the technology is only FDA-approved to treat liver tumors depending on their size, but Dr. Sumner says that the technology is being considered to potentially treat certain forms of kidney cancer.
If you think you may be a candidate for this procedure, contact your doctor.
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