Urology
-
Can focal therapy successfully control prostate cancer? Also, if so, which patients should be considered eligible? With limited data available from relatively few patients, these questions are difficult to answer. At this writing, the most likely candidates for focal therapy are patients with low-risk, small-volume tumors, located in 1 region or sector of the prostate, who would benefit from early intervention. The difficulty lies in reliably identifying these men. ⋯ More work is necessary before staging studies can uniformly characterize a prostate cancer before therapy, much less reliably identify and locate small-volume cancer within the prostate. However, exploring the role of focal ablation as a therapeutic option for selected men with low-risk, clinically localized, prostate cancer need not await the emergence of perfectly accurate staging studies, any more than the application of radical surgery or radiotherapy have. Modern biopsy strategies, combined with optimal imaging and nomograms to estimate the pathologic stage and risk, taken together, provide a sound basis for the selection of appropriate patients for entry into prospective clinical trials of focal therapy.
-
Interest in focal therapy for prostate cancer has recently been renewed owing to downward stage migration, improved biopsy and imaging techniques, and the prevalence of either unifocal cancer or a dominant cancer with secondary tumors of minimal malignant potential. Several techniques have potential for focal ablation of prostate cancer. Cryotherapy has been used for some time as primary therapy for complete ablation of the prostate or local recurrence after radiotherapy. ⋯ This technique does not heat the prostate but destroys the endothelial cells and cancer by activating the photodynamic agent. Damage to surrounding structures appears to be limited and can be controlled by the duration and intensity of the light. We have reviewed the principles of focal therapy and these new therapeutic modalities.
-
To present the initial experience in laparoscopic radical prostatectomy performed exclusively through an umbilical incision using a single three-channel port and specially designed flexible laparoscopic instrumentation. ⋯ Single-port laparoscopic radical prostatectomy is feasible. Additional investigation is needed to evaluate the safety and oncologic adequacy of this new approach.