A 92-year-old great-grandmother from Harrogate has become the first person in the UK to receive robotic-guided electrochemotherapy for a liver tumour, and the results have been remarkable.
Brenda Iveson was diagnosed with a six-centimetre tumour in her liver in late 2025.
Doctors told her that surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy were all off the table, because of where the tumour was positioned and because of her frailty at her age.
In most hospitals, that conversation ends there.
But at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, a specialist team looked at her case differently, and what happened next has drawn attention from cancer clinicians across the UK and Europe.
According to the official announcement from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, the treatment shrunk Brenda’s tumour by approximately 80%.
She described the experience in straightforward terms: “I had been told there was nothing that could be done. So to be offered this treatment gave me real hope. I’m so glad I went ahead. It wasn’t painful or debilitating, and I feel very well.”
That is a woman in her tenth decade of life walking away from a procedure that her doctors say produced results where every standard treatment had been ruled out.
What Is Electrochemotherapy?
Electrochemotherapy is not a brand-new concept in oncology, but the way it was used in Brenda’s case represents something genuinely new for the UK.
The treatment combines two elements that, on their own, are each limited.
The first is a low dose of chemotherapy, typically using a drug called bleomycin, which has strong cancer-killing properties but struggles to get inside cancer cells on its own because the cell membrane acts as a barrier.
The second is targeted electrical pulses, which are delivered directly to the tumour site.
When the electrical pulses hit the cancer cells, they temporarily increase the permeability of the cell membrane, essentially opening tiny doors that allow the chemotherapy drug to flood in.
The result is a much more concentrated and targeted attack on the tumour, using a fraction of the drug dose that a standard chemotherapy course would require.
Research published in the World Journal of Gastroenterology describes electrochemotherapy as one of the more promising non-thermal ablative approaches for liver cancer, particularly for tumours that are too close to blood vessels, bile ducts, or other vital structures to be safely treated with heat-based techniques like radiofrequency ablation.
That last point matters a great deal, because Brenda’s tumour was positioned in exactly that kind of difficult location.
Conventional thermal ablation, which works by burning away tumour tissue, carries real risks when the target is near the structures that keep the liver functioning.
Electrochemotherapy does not use heat, which is one of the reasons it was considered suitable where other options were not.
What Made Brenda’s Case a UK First
Here is where the story gets more specific, and more significant.
Electrochemotherapy for liver tumours has been used in other countries, including Italy, Slovenia and parts of northern Europe, mostly through open surgical procedures or with older guidance methods.
What the team at Leeds did was different.
They combined the electrochemotherapy with robotic needle guidance, using advanced imaging and robotic assistance to place the electrodes around the tumour with a level of precision that manual placement cannot reliably achieve.
As reported by National Health Executive, the robotic system allowed clinicians to position needles with exceptional accuracy around the tumour, a critical factor in complex liver cases where even small placement errors can mean the difference between hitting the tumour and damaging surrounding tissue.
This combination, electrochemotherapy delivered with robotic needle guidance inside the liver, had never been performed anywhere in the UK before Brenda’s procedure.
The procedure was carried out under general anaesthetic.
It was led by Professor Tze Min Wah, Research and Innovation Lead for the Interventional Oncology Programme at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and Professor of Interventional Radiology at the University of Leeds.
Professor Wah reflected on what the milestone represents: “This treatment allowed us to offer an option where there would otherwise have been none. The addition of robotic guidance improves precision and opens up new possibilities, particularly for patients with tumours in difficult locations or who are not suitable for other treatments.”
How the Procedure Was Conducted
The steps involved in Brenda’s treatment help to illustrate why the robotic element was so important.
First, the clinical team used advanced imaging to map the exact position of the tumour inside the liver.
Using this imaging as a guide, the robotic system directed the placement of needles around the tumour.
The needles were positioned to create a kind of perimeter around the target tissue, ensuring the electrical pulses would cover the tumour without straying into healthy surrounding structures.
Once the needles were in position, the chemotherapy drug was administered and the electrical pulses were delivered, driving the drug into the cancer cells.
The entire procedure was completed under general anaesthetic.
Because no heat was generated, the team could safely treat a tumour positioned near blood vessels and bile ducts that would have made thermal ablation dangerous.
The technology used came from IGEA, an industry partner that supplied the robotic electrochemotherapy equipment, according to Open Access Government.
A multidisciplinary team was involved throughout, including oncology specialists, interventional radiologists, pharmacists and research staff from across the Trust.
What the Results Show
The outcome in Brenda’s case was a reduction in tumour size of approximately 80%.
That figure comes from post-procedure imaging reviewed by the clinical team at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
Brenda herself reports feeling well, with no debilitating side effects following the procedure.
These results are consistent with what earlier research on electrochemotherapy in liver cancer has suggested is possible.
A phase II clinical study published in the journal Cancers evaluated electrochemotherapy in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who were not suitable for other treatment options.
Across 32 treated tumours, the study found a complete response rate of 84.4%, with partial responses in a further 12.5% of cases, and durable responses sustained over 50 months in the majority of treated tumours.
That study, available via the National Institutes of Health, noted that electrochemotherapy proved effective, feasible, and safe with some procedure-related side effects, and concluded that it could be considered a treatment option for liver cancer in patients not suitable for other curative approaches.
It is important to note that Brenda’s case is a single patient outcome, not a clinical trial result for this specific robotic-guided approach.
The broader picture will come from the RESPECT trial, which is currently gathering data across Europe.
Building the Evidence Base
Leeds Teaching Hospitals is currently the only site in the UK participating in the RESPECT trial, a major European observational study sponsored by the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology Society of Europe (CIRSE).
RESPECT stands for Registry on Percutaneous ElectroChemoTherapy.
As described on the CIRSE website, the study is a prospective, non-randomised observational cohort collecting data from patients with primary or secondary liver cancer treated by percutaneous electrochemotherapy across multiple healthcare centres in Europe.
The objectives are to assess how effective the treatment is at controlling liver cancer, how safe it is, and what impact it has on patients’ survival, quality of life, and pain levels.
By taking part in the procedure, Brenda has not only benefited personally but is also contributing data that will inform how this treatment is evaluated and potentially adopted across the NHS and beyond.
Professor Mike Lewis, NIHR Scientific Director for Innovation, commented on what the milestone means for research-led care: “This pioneering research demonstrates how NIHR funding builds crucial research capacity across the whole country, giving talented clinicians the time they need to drive true innovation.”
But Here Is What Most People Are Missing About This Story
When a story like Brenda’s circulates in the news, the coverage tends to focus on the age angle.
A 92-year-old receiving experimental treatment. What a surprise. How brave.
But the more important point is not about Brenda’s age at all.
The more important point is about who gets left out of cancer treatment entirely.
A significant number of cancer patients at any age are told their tumours are inoperable or untreatable, not because treatment does not exist for their cancer type, but because of where the tumour sits, or because conventional approaches carry risks their health cannot absorb.
Frailty, age, proximity of the tumour to critical structures, prior damage to organs from earlier treatment rounds, these are all factors that exclude people from the standard toolkit.
What robotic-guided electrochemotherapy represents is a different category of tool, one that is designed to work precisely where the standard toolkit fails.
It does not replace surgery, radiotherapy or conventional chemotherapy.
It fills a gap that has been left largely empty.
Research published in the journal Biomedicines in December 2024 explored stereotactic percutaneous electrochemotherapy as a treatment modality for primary and secondary liver malignancies and noted its particular value for tumours in complicated anatomical locations where thermal ablation cannot safely be used.
A 2025 study published in Cureus on electrochemotherapy for frail and elderly patients with skin malignancies found the approach offered fewer complications, reduced wound care requirements and faster recovery compared to conventional surgical excision.
The pattern holds across tumour types and patient profiles.
This is not a treatment looking for a problem to solve.
It is a treatment filling a real and documented gap in what medicine can currently offer patients who have run out of other options.
How This Applies to Real Cancer Patient
It is worth being clear about what this does and does not mean for people dealing with cancer right now.
Robotic-guided electrochemotherapy for liver tumours is not yet widely available across the NHS.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals is currently the only UK centre offering it, and only within the framework of the RESPECT trial.
That means access is limited, and the evidence base, while encouraging, is still being built through ongoing research.
What it does mean is that patients who have been told their treatment options are exhausted may benefit from asking whether they are eligible for emerging clinical trials or specialist procedures that are not yet part of standard care.
The path Brenda took was not through a standard referral.
It came because a specialist at Leeds reviewed her case and recognised that a non-standard approach might work where standard ones could not.
Not every patient will have that specialist encounter happen automatically.
Asking questions, seeking second opinions and enquiring about clinical trial eligibility are legitimate steps for anyone facing a cancer diagnosis where conventional routes have been closed off.
What Comes Next for Electrochemotherapy
The field is developing quickly.
Research on combining electrochemotherapy with immunotherapy is ongoing, with early studies suggesting that destroying tumour cells with electrical pulses and chemotherapy may also stimulate the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells elsewhere in the body.
Research published in the World Journal of Gastroenterology notes that this combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors represents one of the more promising directions for expanding the effectiveness of electrochemotherapy beyond local tumour control.
If those trials produce the results researchers are hoping for, the treatment could evolve from a last-resort option for inoperable tumours into something much earlier in the treatment pathway.
For now, the most significant thing about Brenda Iveson’s case is the practical proof it represents.
The technology works.
The robotic guidance works.
The multidisciplinary teamwork that brought all of it together in a Leeds operating theatre for a 92-year-old woman who had been told there was nothing left to offer, that worked too.
Cancer care has always advanced on exactly this kind of moment: a patient, a specialist, a procedure that had never been done in this particular way before, and a result that changes what anyone can say the word “untreatable” really means.
