High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) Treat Prostate Cancer With Fewer Side Effects
According to a study published in British Journal of Cancer, a form of therapy helpful in treating prostate cancer is found to be able to cure men without the need of surgery and with fewer adverse effects. Under this experiment, 172 men suffering from prostate cancer were treated with HIFU (High Intensity Focused Ultrasound) under general anesthesia in University College Hospital, London and Princess Grace Hospital, London. HIFU uses the sound waves for killing cancer cells.
The men who took part in the experiment were discharged from the hospital after 5 hours of the treatment on an average. Usually, prostate cancer is either treated through surgery or through radiotherapy, both of which are lengthy procedures. Surgery requires a patient to be admitted in the hospital while radiotherapy requires a patient to come to the hospital every day for about one month for treatment.
Out of the 172 men who were treated with HIFU, 159 were followed up for one year and it was found that 92% of them did not show any recurrence of the disease. Although this is not a comparative statement because people treated with traditional forms of prostate cancer treatment also have same percentage of recurrence among patients. Out of these 159 men who were followed up, less than 1% had incontinence, around 30-40% had impotence but no one had any kind of bowel problems.
If we follow patients who are treated with surgery or radiotherapy, we will find that 5-20% will have incontinence and 50% will have impotence. Radiotherapy may also cause some side effects like diarrhea, bleeding and pain in 5-20% of treated patients. A spokesperson from the division of surgical and interventional science of UCL said that this therapy of treating prostate cancer can be used extensively in future because it has fewer adverse effects. But yet, it is not known if it is more useful and effective than surgery and radiotherapy. Further studies are needed to be carried out, which will involve treatment of larger number of men and following up for a longer period. In this way, they will be able to compare the effectiveness of the treatment in the long run.
HIFU or High Intensity Focused Ultrasound makes use of high frequency waves of sound for heating up small tissues to 80-90 ºC temperature. This therapy can be used to treat the entire prostate or only the cancer affected areas. The chief clinician of Cancer Research UK also said that further studies are needed to be made to prove the effectiveness of HIFU therapy. If it is found that this method causes fewer side effects in the patients as compared to other methods of treatment, then that will be very good news. HIFU does not pass through air and solid bone so it can only treat a limited type of cancer including prostate cancer, primary and secondary liver cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer and pancreatic cancer.