prostate-report.org

Prostate care with no incision or scars

Niagara doctors are using a relatively new treatment in Canada to defeat an age-old problem -the most common form of cancer found in North American men.

Since June 2007, NiagaraHIFU has provided prostate cancer patients with a minimally- invasive procedure that targets cancer tissue but doesn’t require incisions or needle insertions.

The treatment is guided by the Sonablate 500, an image-guided acoustic surgical removal device.

It uses intersecting, precision-focused ultrasound waves to raise the temperature of the targeted tissue to about 90 C in two to three seconds in order to kill the prostate tissue.

The process is similar to the way surgeons focus shock waves in a procedure to break up kidney stones.

This kind of treatment it’s not covered by the government because it’s a new kind of therapy, so it’s relatively expensive. The cost for a Canadian patient is around $22,000 while an American patient would pay about $25,000.