Some interesting information was presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s 35th Annual Scientific Meeting just held in Tampa, Fl. A potential future use of magnetic resonance (MR)-guided heat (laser interstitial thermal therapy) or cold (cryoablation) to treat the recurrence of prostate cancer after the surgical removal of the prostate gland (and in some cases after the failure of salvage radiation) was disclosed.
“Magnetic resonance-guided ablation may prove to be a promising new treatment for prostate cancer recurrences; it tailors treatment modality (imaging) and duration to lesion size and location and provides a less invasive and minimally traumatic alternative for men,” said David A. Woodrum, M.D., Ph.D., an interventional radiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “The safe completion of four clinical cases using MR-guided ablation therapy to treat prostate cancer in patients who had failed surgery demonstrates this technology’s potential,” he said, stressing, however, that the application for using ablation therapy in treating prostate cancer is relatively new.
In the study four men with recurrent prostate cancer had previously been treated with a radical prostatectomy. The men then underwent salvage therapy using either MR-guided laser interstitial thermal therapy, which uses high temperatures generated by local absorption of lase