UroToday - Control of Prostate Cancer by Transrectal HIFU in 227 Patients

HIFU, or high intensity focused ultrasound, works by creating ultrasound waves that are concentrated on the prostate to destroy the tumor cells.

I did research on HIFU for the destruction of kidney tissue when I was a resident at Indiana University. Our institution was doing a clinical research project on using HIFU to treat localized prostate cancer in newly diagnosed men.

This study from France has a much larger series then what we had, and shows some interesting results.

I concentrate on the 14% of patients that still had cancer on biopsy. These biopsies were done after 3 months and is only a small sampling of total prostate tissue, but still shows a high number of cancers.

They also lumped in hormone treatment which can lower PSA values, but cause many side effects and are not curative.

An incontinent rate of 9% is still high as well.

I will await further HIFU studies, but have not seen anything that yet that is an improvement over available therapies.

HIFU is still not FDA approved in our country, but there are centers in Europe and Canada that offer it.