Cancer survival rates plummet when the disease spreads around the body. An estimated 90% of cancer deaths are caused when tumors enter other organs or tissues, according to researchers.

One way to slow this down is to identify quickly which treatments are working and which aren’t, and researchers now believe they might be able to do this by sending sound waves into the body.

If the pressure in cancer cells is very high, it could mean that drugs with a smaller molecular weight are better suited to entering the cell – larger molecules might not get through.

Body tissue is under pressure all the time due to blood running through vessels, but in cancer tissue this pressure rises as the blood vessels in a tumour are hastily built and rudimentary, exerting more pressure on surrounding body tissue.

In theory, pressure would be a good indicator of whether treatments are reducing the size of tumours. The problem comes in trying to measure it – at the moment doctors need to push a needle in, which can easily skew the result.

Using sound waves – something similar to the hum of an electrical shaver - could finally give them a way to check from the outside, if a research effort underway in Europe is successful.

Read the full article on sound waves and cancer treatment at The Naked Scientists