Sound waves treat prostate cancer with fewer side effects

An experimental cancer therapy for prostate cancer may be able to treat men without surgery and offer fewer side effects, according to the results of a UCL-led study published in the British Journal of Cancer today. A group of 172 men with prostate cancer that had not spread were treated under general anaesthetic with High-Intensity-Focused Ultrasound (HIFU), which uses sound waves to kill cancer cells. The men taking part in the trial were discharged on average five hours after receiving the HIFU treatment. Typically men with prostate cancer are treated with either surgery or radiotherapy. Surgery usually requires a two- to three-day inpatient stay and radiotherapy requires daily treatment as an outpatient for up to one month. Of the initial group, 159 men were followed up a year later and 92 per cent did not have any recurrence of prostate cancer. Although this was not a comparative study, it would be expected that traditional treatments for early prostate cancer of surgery or radiotherapy would show a similar percentage of men showing no recurrence of their prostate cancer one year on.