Low-Risk Ultrasound Procedure Destroys 80 Percent of Prostate Cancers In One-Year Study (slashgear.com) 78
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SlashGear: A new treatment shows promise for revolutionizing prostate cancer treatment, offering a minimally-invasive and relatively low-risk alternative to traditional surgeries and radiotherapies. Called TULSA, this method uses sound waves to eliminate the diseased tissue in the prostate, leaving the rest of the healthy tissues behind. According to the researchers, patients treated with this method experience "minimal side effects." The transurethral ultrasound ablation (TULSA) method uses an MRI to guide the procedure, which involves inserting a rod through the urethra into the prostate, where it uses heat via sound waves to destroy the cancerous tissues. Unlike the surgery typically used to treat this condition, TULSA is minimally invasive and can be performed as an outpatient procedure.
Using guided and controlled sound waves, doctors are able to preserve the nerves near the prostate while eliminating the diseased tissues using a total of 10 elements located on the insertable rod. A software algorithm is part of the system -- it controls the strength, direction, and shape of the ultrasound beam, though doctors watch carefully using the MRI in real-time. A new study involving 115 men found that the average treatment time for this procedure is a bit less than an hour. The researchers found that 80-percent of patients experienced elimination of "clinically significant" cancer and that 72 of the men had no signs of cancer after the first year. As well, incontinence was a very rare side effect of the procedure, which also had low instances of impotence.
Using guided and controlled sound waves, doctors are able to preserve the nerves near the prostate while eliminating the diseased tissues using a total of 10 elements located on the insertable rod. A software algorithm is part of the system -- it controls the strength, direction, and shape of the ultrasound beam, though doctors watch carefully using the MRI in real-time. A new study involving 115 men found that the average treatment time for this procedure is a bit less than an hour. The researchers found that 80-percent of patients experienced elimination of "clinically significant" cancer and that 72 of the men had no signs of cancer after the first year. As well, incontinence was a very rare side effect of the procedure, which also had low instances of impotence.
Re:Yet another all-male treatment (Score:5, Funny)
The lady doth prostrate too much, methinks
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How many walkathons are there for breast cancer versus those for prostate cancer?
Um, ever tried participating in a walk-a-thon when you have prostate cancer?
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How many walkathons are there for breast cancer versus those for prostate cancer?
ZERO prostate cancer arranged 43 run/walks in the US in 2019 https://support.zerocancer.org... [zerocancer.org]
Why not contact them about arranging something in your local area!
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Re: Yet another all-male treatment (Score:1)
Also if OP hade cancer killing her- of himself will solve that too.
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Technologies learned for one cancer treatment are often useful for others. And money invested doesn't guarantee cures or technological innovations. Have you any comparison of the effects of the cancers or of the overall amount of resources spent versus effective treatment?
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Among cancers, breast cancer is the most funded, in absolute dollars ($557 million), per new case ($2596), and per death ($13,452). On the other hand, prostate cancer receives only $309 million ($1318 per new case, $11,298 per death).
Sources:
https://report.nih.gov/categor... [nih.gov]
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com... [nytimes.com]
Re: Yet another all-male treatment (Score:2)
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Are you assuming my prostate?
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I thought the claim now was that women can have prostates, too? If idiots can be taken seriously when they claim that men can get pregnant, the equally idiotic claim that woman can have a prostate must be taken seriously. So this is a treatment for women.
Minimally invasive? (Score:2, Funny)
"which involves inserting a rod through the urethra into the prostate"
Tangentially, to quote the late great Jackie Martling: "I'll take a pinky on my birthday but that's about it"
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compared to surgical resection a rod up the schmeckel aint all that bad.
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Uses sound waves (Score:2)
That must be one hell of a hummer!
Cheaper alternative... (Score:5, Funny)
Just get an an Echo Dot, insert in trousers, and say "Alexa, play Metallica for an hour".
Since heat seems to play a role as well, may as well stuff a few activated hand warmers down there with it.
Real-time? (Score:1)
MRI real time? That sounds unlikely. It takes ten minutes of being motionless the scan a joint.
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it takes me less time than that to smoke it
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FMRI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging [wikipedia.org]
Depends on the exam (Score:2)
Depends on the actual geometry of the image (a full 3D volume, or just a single 2D sliec ?) the resolution you want, the total size of the picture and the amount of noise and artefact you're ready to tolerate.
It can go all the way from 20min~30min (3D volume of the whole brain with voxels less than 1mm^3 each and very clean signal) all the way down to seconds (slightly blurry small slice).
I suspect that the prostate image are closer to the later.
They burn the cancer with sound? (Score:1)
Re:They burn the cancer with sound? (Score:5, Insightful)
The alternatives, of course, are:
If this approach avoids the problem of making subsequent surgery infeasible, it's a huge win. Heck, the fact that this might actually be repeatable, unlike radiation, would make it a huge win by itself. Of course, using targeted delivery of metal in the bloodstream, letting it accumulate in the tumor, and then burning out the tumor cells electromagnetically would be even better, assuming it works for that type of cancer, and using the immune system to attack it would be better still, but this approach still sounds like it is probably a significant improvement over what's out there.
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Much more recent and very low collateral damage therapies include proton beam and CyberKnife (super focused x-ray).
... and death. (Score:2)
I don't get those people who bitch about procedures they would brush off as easy if the were done on their foot or nose, if it somehow involves their penis or anus or something else down there.
It's like a meme they repeat because they believe that somehow makes them look like a "real man" (a true Scotsman too ;).
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Living in Scotland by choice for over 35 years, and remaining a true Irishman, the amount of stupid girning I get from non-Scots when I'm togged up in a kilt ("dress"-kilt, or "drinking"-kilt, whatever) about how it's cold, and do I wear it "traditionally" ... is tedious.
Yes, you don't wear anything under your kilt apart from a smile. No, it's not cold, even if the snow is whipping aroun
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My father was treated with beam radiation, and I think you're exaggerating the risks, at least for the more advanced methods where multiple treatments are made along different axes so the maximum cumulative dose is only delivered to the specific part of the prostate that's being targeted.
The "tends to turn the entire prostate to jelly so it can't be removed su
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So was my grandfather, and no, I'm not. Fistulas and bowel damage are a rare, but serious side effect. To be fair, though, this was back in... probably the late 1980s or early 1990s, so it is probably much less likely these days.
No idea.
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My father was treated in 2011 with no side effects to speak of, this mentions a set of increasingly sophisticated treatments [webmd.com]. Medical imaging for better targeting has also gotten a lot better
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I previously mentioned I hadn't come across this; now doing more research I found this [sperlingpr...center.com] on a page extolling the virtues of multiparametric MRI:
Re:They burn the cancer with sound? (Score:5, Informative)
The transducer is maybe the size of a grain of rice. The "rod" is a very thin stiff wire. All of it is way smaller than a Foley catheter.
A good friend of mine made the prototypes and some early production.. They were doing this more than 10 years ago. Shame it takes so long to get to mass public.
The ultrasonic energy heats the prostate to maybe 107-110 F. Turns out tumors don't like heat. But neither do many organs including brain, so overall heating isn't a good therapy. Tumor destruction by heat works better on some tumors more than others.
In Canada they've approved external ultrasonic heating of tumors, where they use many transducers, sometimes arrays, to focus the energy on a tumor. It's had some success.
Also called "HIFU" https://www.icr.ac.uk/news-features/latest-features/hifu-using-ultrasound-to-heat-and-destroy-tumours [icr.ac.uk]
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I wonder if there's been a study between those that habitually soak in hot springs (or baths) or use saunas relative to the average cancer rates and the type of them.
Yes, great point, I was wondering that too, especially for tumors that are near the skin. But hot tubs should max at 104F, which isn't quite enough to kill tumors, but maybe some tumors are more susceptible to mild heat?
I've always considered people's natural desires for food, hot, cold, etc. Some urea comes out through skin pores, so I've wondered if saunas, hot tubs, etc., are a way to get rid of poisons, and maybe the person has weak kidneys, or there are heavy metals in the water or food, or something
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The ultrasonic energy heats the prostate to maybe 107-110 F.
Prostate Sous Vide.
Wait, do you even need to treat most of them? (Score:1)
Re: Wait, do you even need to treat most of them? (Score:4, Informative)
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The other problem with that approach is that there are a couple of different kinds of prostate cancer. Most of the time, it is very slow-growing, but every now and then you run into an aggressive form that metastasizes, at which point you're pretty much screwed.
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Step one: ask him his age in years. Step two: yeah that's pretty much the probability he has prostate cancer."
That is about right. I was told that most men over 50 have it, they just don't know it. It acts slowly though and most guys die of something else first. So it is worth the treatment if you are otherwise in good health.
I unfortunately know about this subject... (Score:5, Informative)
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
Thank you for the useful information.
Re: This is a +5, informative (Score:2)
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Good luck to you.
I'm 58, and one of my annual blood tests is for PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen). It's not the gold standard of markers, but mine is so low, my GP said I'd have to live to to 120 to develop prostate cancer. Doesn't mean I won't have other, more accurate tests, but it's reassuring.
I gave up smoking at 50, so that danger recedes, but I've got the usual white male issues of weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. Most of the weight came after I gave up smoking, it's *really* hard to shift, desp
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Thank you for sharing this. Can I ask - How much were your out of pocket costs?
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Thank you for sharing this. Can I ask - How much were your out of pocket costs?
Hello There. Original Poster here. UCLA charges $25K for the HIFU procedure as do third party medical groups. The reason they do this is because right now HIFU is in the medical "no man's land" of medical procedures. It is looked at as a valid and superior treatment procedure for specific tumors (one keeps both urinary function and erections) but their is not enough scientific studies on long term survival rates for insurance will cover it. But it's an incredibly quick and easy procedure done in 1/2 a day.
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Here is a link to the department: https://www.uclahealth.org/uro... [uclahealth.org] and here is a link to Dr Marks presentation on HIFU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] . Dr. Marks is a bit dry but I can most highly recommend him.
Wow, it's been a while since I've seen those animations.
I actually worked on this while it was undergoing its clinical trials for FDA approval. At the time, most patients were routed through hospital sites outside the U.S. (at significantly lesser expense, despite the travel).
It has been used to treat kidney cancer laparoscopically, and there was some heavy R&D that went into pancreatic applications as well, though I think that it stalled out eventually.
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I'm glad you caught it early and got satisfying treatment.
I also researched prostate cancer a bunch after I noticed some weird symptoms with my urinary tract. It turned out not to be cancer or BPH (a benign enlargement of the prostate), but I read up a bunch on the disease and the remedies.
For all the people with prostates out there, here's a few quick things to know:
1. Prostate cancer has the highest five, ten and fifteen year survival rates of any cancer that I saw stats for. Somewhere in excess of 95% s
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Another reason not to panic: By the time you have symptoms it has probably already spread and you won't have to have any of these icky procedures.
I am among the lucky 1% that won't make it to 5 years. Younger guys that get it often end up with a more aggressive strain.
The only real lesson is to live a good life. Enjoy every sandwich.
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Oof. I'm really sorry to hear that. I've got no platitudes or misplaced optimism to offer you, I just hope you enjoyed a lot of sandwiches and have time to enjoy a few more.
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Not really. I had felt a little run down for a while. Thought that came from turning 50.
Then I started pissing blood.
That was over 2 years ago now. Since then I have felt quite good most of the time, got back into shape between treatments, and had lots of fun because nothing else matters.
I'm down to clinical trials now, but there are more left to try.
I didn't expect to make it through this year. I don't expect to make it through next year. One of these years I won't be wrong.
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One of these years I won't be wrong.
True for us all. I have my virtual fingers crossed for you.
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Fun fact: African American men have a higher incident of prostate cancer because they, as a group, have a higher average testosterone level.
Sad(?) fact: Oriental men have a lower incidence because they have lower levels of testosterone. Might explain their ladyboy tendency and their not seeming to be bothered by western men getting off with their best girls; I'm being serious.
When Jedis get prostate cancer... (Score:2)
Tulsa.... (Score:2)
Oh please! (Score:2)
A catheter used to be a metal rod.
If it is smaller than the urethra, it's really nothing special.
The alternative is literal actual death!
So stop this stupid act. And maybe you'll even discover that you like it. ;))
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The problem is that most of the time it's a slow painful unaoidable death.
Always destruction... (Score:2)
Why not convert it back? Aka actually *curing* it.
Why must it always involve cutting things out, or otherwise destroying them?
That is not a cure. It is better than nothing. And better than those even more bullshit "cures" where they make you an addict of their expensive pills for the rest of your life, to merely hide the symptoms.
But it is still horribly medeival and not a cure.
Maybe in 200 years, when we have left the dark ages.
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Um, maybe because cancer (by definition) is the destruction of normal organs & cells? The doctor is stopping the destruction by removing the cancer.
Getting rid of the cancer is indeed a cure. You don't die of cancer when you remove the cancer. I'd call that a cure.
If you want to "convert it back", best bet currently is to clone a new organ. Even then, that's "swap out a defective part", not "converting".
Next time you see a car crash, go ask the mechanic to "convert it back" when repairing the airbags a
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Cancer cells are so deranged there's no realistic way to convert them back to normal cells. So removing or killing them are the only methods. Although prostate cancer can be an exception, if its sufficiently in an old man it can just be ignored, he'll likely die of something else before that cancer gets him.
For cancer there's no "bullshit 'cures' where they make you an addict of their expensive pills for the rest of your life", chemotherapy is brutal because cancer cells are too much like normal cells, a
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Read the comments section.
Someone explained it quite well.
Shoving a heated rod in your peehole (Score:2)
does not sound minimally invasive to me .. I guess it beats a knife though.