Just a little while ago, I gave a presentation at our offices about an exciting treatment for prostate cancer new to Las Vegas which is HIFU…High Intensity Focused Ultrasound with the Sonoblate HIFU machine. Compared to the more typical choices for prostate cancer treatment such as radical surgery or radiation, HIFU treatment is minimally invasive, there is no significant blood loss, and there are much less side effects.
While treatment with radiation or surgery may be expected to cause erectile dysfunction in half or even more patients treated, the chances with HIFU are only about 15-20% when the entire gland is treated, and only 10% when half of the gland is treated. This brings up something else unique about HIFU which is that only part of the gland can be treated, known as focal, or hemi treatment if cancer is only in the right or left lobe of the prostate.
As far as overall results go, some eye-popping numbers came out in the European Journal of Urology recently in mid-2018:
A Multicentre Study of 5-year Outcomes Following Focal Therapy in Treating Clinically Significant Nonmetastatic Prostate Cancer
Posted on: June 27, 2018
Source: EUROPEAN UROLOGY, June 27, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eururo.2018.06.006
Design, setting, and participants: This was a prospective study of 625 consecutive patients with nonmetastatic clinically significant PCa undergoing focal HIFU therapy (Sonablate)
Conclusions: Focal therapy for select patients with clinically significant nonmetastatic prostate cancer is effective in the medium term and has a low probability of side effects.
Patient summary: In this multicentre study of 625 patients undergoing focal therapy using high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), failure-free survival, metastasis-free survival, cancer-specific survival, and overall survival were 88%, 98%, 100%, and 99%, respectively. Urinary incontinence (any pad use) was 2%. Focal HIFU therapy for patients with clinically significant prostate cancer that has not spread has a low probability of side effects and is effective at 5 yr.
One very exciting point I like to make is that the way the treatment regimen is designed, individual areas of only 1cm by 0.3 cm are treated one at a time. In the typical prostate, this requires thousands of individual doses requiring the skill of the urologist. However, it is exactly these tiny individual doses which allow the precise anatomical treatment that minimizes side effects.
Watch this video below and check this link out as well: https://www.hifuprostateservices.com/
HIFU Prostate Services | HIFU for localized prostate cancer
www.hifuprostateservices.com
HIFU, which stands for High Intensity Focused Ultrasound, is a non-invasive, outpatient treatment for prostate cancer that preserves patient quality of life.