Urology CancerCARE News Archive Featured in the Media JeffNEWS

Urologic researchers at Jefferson’s Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia are studying whether high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) can be an effective treatment for low-risk prostate cancer and an alternative to using surgery, radiotherapy or cryosurgery.

Jefferson is taking part in a phase three clinical trial for treating localized prostate cancer using HIFU and is currently enrolling participants.

“It’s widely used in Europe and has shown to be effective and less invasive,” said  urologist Edouard J. Trabulsi, M.D., assistant professor of Urology, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, who is the principle investigator at Jefferson.

Nearly a quarter-million cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed in American men each year.

Therapeutic ultrasound has been used as a minimally invasive or non-invasive method to deposit acoustic energy into tissue to treat tissue ablation, uterine fibroids and hyperthermia.

In HIFU treatment, ultrasound beams are administered through a trans-rectal probe and focused into the prostate to kill tumors. Due to the significant energy focused, the temperature within the tissue rises to near boiling in a few seconds, destroying the diseased tissue by coagulation necrosis. Each application of the beams treats a precisely defined portion of the targeted tissue.

In most cases, HIFU is a two to four hour, one-time procedure performed on an outpatient basis under spinal or general anesthesia. Unlike radiotherapy, HIFU is non-ionizing, meaning HIFU may also be used as a salvage technique if other prostate cancer treatments fail.

An important difference between HIFU and other forms of focused energy, such as radiation therapy, is that the passage of ultrasound energy through intervening tissue has no apparent cumulative effect on that tissue. In contrast, radiation therapy has a cumulative, damaging effect on healthy tissues, even when they are distant from the focal target. This often limits the ability to use this modality more than once for a specific treatment.

Participants in the study must:

• Be age 60 or older
• Have a small prostate gland of 40 grams or less
• Have organ-confined prostate cancer stage T1 or T2
• Have had a prostate biopsy within six months that is positive for cancer cells
• Have a biopsy Gleason score (score given to prostate cancer based upon its microscopic appearance) of six or less

For more information, please call 215-955-9954.