Think of prostate cancer surgery and what likely comes to mind is a radical prostatectomy, which is an operation to remove the entire prostate gland along with the seminal vesicles that produce semen. However, men with localized prostate cancer -- meaning cancer that is still confined to the prostate -- have another surgical option.
Called focal therapy, this alternative procedure treats only the cancerous part of the prostate and leaves the rest of the gland intact. The aim is to remove “clinically significant” tumor tissue, cancer that would spread further if it wasn’t treated at all.
But 88% of the high-risk men and 90% of the intermediate-risk men also avoided hormonal therapy, a treatment that -- because of its side effects -- most men don’t want. The authors concluded that focal therapy may be an acceptable treatment that controls prostate cancer in older men as well as radical prostatectomy does.
It’s important to note that complications from focal therapy are possible. For instance, a small percentage of men in the new study developed urinary tract infections, and some also wound up with urinary retention, a treatable condition that occurs when the bladder can’t empty completely. The authors didn’t assess functional outcomes after surgery, such as erectile dysfunction or urinary incontinence.
The findings are encouraging, but Harvard experts emphasize that more evidence with focal therapy is still needed. “Despite promising results such as those reported in this and other studies, long-term outcomes following focal therapy must still be assessed to fully determine how this treatment option compares to radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy,” says Dr.
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