What are you going to do if you have had radiation therapy as a primary prostate cancer therapy and the cancer has reoccurred? If the disease has remained in the prostate gland some men are able to go back and have surgery, but the condition the gland has been left in post radiation makes it very difficult to perform the surgery. At this time most doctors recommend that you move on to hormone therapy (ADT), which provides no hope for a curative result.
There has been a recent interest, as well as some clinical trials, using high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) to see if it can offer a cure to men at this stage. HIFU has already been approved for use in Europe, Canada, Mexico, India and South America as a treatment after failed radiation therapy. HIFU is in the final stages of obtaining FDA approval in the United States.
HIFU is described as a minimally invasive, outpatient prostate cancer treatment. The technology destroys tissue using extreme heat generated by focusing ultrasound waves (not radiation) on a specific target site. The ultrasound energy is delivered in rapid-fire succession to targeted tissue, in this case throughout the remaining prostate gland. The tissue at each target is destroyed while surrounding tissue remains unharmed. HIFU does not use radiation and is not a surgical procedure.
“We hope that HIFU will make patients with recurrent prostate cancer disease free, without the side eff