“Cancer-free!” declared Jenifer Hughes’ doctors in July 2025. Jenifer, a cardiac care nurse at Chippenham Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, was overjoyed. She’d undergone 24 weeks of chemo, a bilateral mastectomy and 37 cycles of radiation. She was 54. Her son had just gotten married. After surviving Stage 2 breast cancer, she was back on track for life with her growing family.

In December, Jenifer found a nodule in her neck. “Everybody was like, ‘Oh, it can’t be cancer because you just went through all this treatment,’” she says. “I went to Radiology downstairs. They did a biopsy and found that my cancer had returned. It was very aggressive and had metastasized to the right side of my chest, in the back.”

Jenifer’s medical oncologist started looking for clinical trials and told her she had six to nine months to live. “That was not in the plans for me,” she says. “I’m a persistent person.” Hoping for better news, she made appointments at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Duke and the Medical College of Virginia. Every doctor repeated the grim prognosis.

Every doctor except Daniel Woolley, MD, a thoracic surgery specialist at Chippenham. “I have a good friend who works with Dr. Woolley, who’d read a blog post I’d written about my experience,” she says. “He came down one day and said, ‘I’ll ablate it for you.’”

Dr. Woolley describes pulsed electric field (PEF) ablation technology as a therapy that uses low-dose electricity to disrupt tumor cells’ membranes.

The problem with tumors, he explains, is that they look like healthy cells. “Unless we have some other way of recognizing them, there’s no way for our immune system to interact with them,” he says. Pulsed field ablation causes the cells to disrupt their membranes so they become leaky. Then the immune system can recognize them as abnormal and activate.

The main difference between this specific technology and some other ablative therapies, such as radio frequency, microwave and cryo, is its use of electricity rather than thermal energy.

“There are advantages to that,” says Dr. Woolley. First, the size and shape of the ablation zone stay predictable and precise — something that’s harder to guarantee with thermal methods. With a thermal ablation, you don’t always know how well you’re ablating an area. If there’s a blood vessel nearby, it can pull heat away from a heat-based ablation. The result: an area that’s undertreated, or one where the ablation spreads, damaging surrounding tissue.

Another benefit is that PEF doesn’t destroy all the membranes where the cells are living. “It allows you to keep the basic structure of the lung intact so you can repopulate with fresh cells,” he says.

When Dr. Woolley read Jenifer’s blog post, her situation reminded him of a case he’d heard about where doctors used ablation to treat a man who had a sarcoma of the thigh with metastases throughout his body. “After treating his thigh, a six-month follow-up PET scan showed everything in the lung and abdomen had disappeared. Everything present was still in the thigh, which is where the primary tumor was. You see that and go, ‘Wow, that’s impressive.’”

Dr. Woolley reviewed Jenifer’s PET scan and thought, “If this worked for sarcoma, why not breast cancer?”

Jenifer and Dr. Woolley prepared to act. “I put my trust in the community hospital I’ve worked at for 32 years,” she says. “I put my trust in the people I know.”

Of the five areas in Jenifer’s lung with cancerous cells, PEF could only reach four. And like the man with the sarcoma on his thigh, the ablation cleared all five, including the site that was never touched.

Dr. Woolley says that pulsed electrical field ablation usually is not considered a primary treatment. For Jenifer, it was paired with chemo. “Unless a patient can’t have surgery or radiation or chemo — or is just too sick to have anything else done — it’s usually used as an adjunct treatment in combination with chemo or radiation.”

Jenifer understands monthly chemo will likely be a part of her schedule for her entire life. She understands it also plays a role in her success. “I’m not saying the chemo hasn’t helped me, but I don’t think I would still be here without this procedure.”

Jenifer and Dr. Woolley agree that the PEF treatment is relatively easy and painless. “Most people feel no pain with it,” says Dr. Woolley. “It can be done as an outpatient procedure.”

One month after Jenifer’s treatment, her PET and CT scans both came back clear. “I was supposed to be dead two months ago, but instead, I have seen my son get married and I can hold my 8-week-old grandbaby,” she says. “I’m still able to work as a nurse. I have wonderful bosses who work with my schedule and allow me to do what I love.”

Currently, Dr. Woolley is using this specific PEF to treat lung cancer patients, as well as patients with tumors that have progressed to the lung. He uses two approaches for delivering the pulsed electric field treatment to a lung tumor: percutaneous, which means a needle goes directly through the skin and chest wall, and endobronchial, which means a bronchoscope enters through the airway.

Jenifer feels passionate about sharing her experience. She thinks back to those early visits with multiple doctors who told her she had six to nine months to live. Her heart goes out to others in the same boat. “Who else is going through the same thing as me? I want it to get out there more.”

Dr. Woolley plans to review Jenifer’s next PET scan in September 2026. “He told me if the areas come back again, he’ll ablate them again,” she says.

The treatment makes Jenifer feel grateful for the time she now has with her granddaughter, and she’s optimistic for other cancer patients. In her role, she sees new technology all the time. “I’ve been a nurse for more than 30 years. It still amazes me what we can do, what is new and coming out every day.”