Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is the only hospital in Western New York to offer HIFU, or high-intensity focused ultrasound, a minimally invasive treatment for prostate cancer that offers reduced side effects and faster healing.
HIFU is “the use of ultrasonic waves generated by a transducer to kill cancer cells without harming the rest of the normal tissue,” explains Ahmed Aly Hussein, MD, a urologist at Roswell Park. It is an outpatient procedure requiring only general anesthesia and the patient can go home about an hour after treatment is completed.
My name is Ahmed Ali Hussein. I'm uh one of the urologists at Rossell Park, an assistant professor of oncology in the Department of Urology. So, Hau stands for high intensity focus ultrasound. It's one form of focus therapy. Focal therapy refers to treating only the focus of the prostate that's involved with cancer. So basically, we only treat the cancer and we leave the rest of the prostate untouched. Focal therapy could be done with other forms of energy as well like cryotherapy, which would be by freezing uh uh laser gold nanoparticles and others. Uh But Hau is one of the main modalities of focal therapy. We are the first in Buffalo to provide Hau as an option for uh treatment of localized prostate cancer. For our patients. Hyo can be considered the least invasive because it's, it doesn't really involve any needles. It goes through a transrectal probe that's placed in the rectum. Other modalities may need to go through the perineum. So there might be some needles involved, maybe a little bit of pain. But Hypo hypo has the advantage of avoiding all of that. Once we wake up the patient from anesthesia, they, you know, stay in recovery for like half an hour or 45 minutes to make sure that they recovered well from anesthesia. And after that, they can go home, minimal side effects as well. In terms of the effects of on urinary control and erectile function. It's a common practice to leave a catheter in, in, in all patients who undergo this procedure. Um Usually what happens as part of the treatment that the pro the prostate swells. And this can affect the ability of the patients to urinate easily. So as a common practice, we just leave a catheter in for a few days, usually 3 to 5 days, sometimes a little longer if the process is bigger. And then once we take the catheter out, we let the patients know that initially there will be some difficulty with urination, uh increased frequency, urgency, maybe a little bit of weak flow that tends to improve over over time over the course of the next few days. At the end of the day, it's all about patients. We should give a priority for what the patient, our jobs as physicians and surgeons to provide all the different options for patients. What's good and what's bad about each one of those. The patients should be able to use the best options for them. A perfect candidate for HAU would be a patient who have lower grade prostate cancer. The disease should be ideally localized to one lobe of the prostate, the disease should be visible by either MRI or ultrasound posterior lesions that are closer to the rectum. These are, you know, better suited for Hau. Also, there are some indications in terms of the prostate size. Um So we, we don't prefer very big prostates. There are some counter indications for HAU and this would include latex allergy. Uh patients who have latex allergy, they cannot get the latex catheters. We need a latex catheter during, during the hyper procedure. Uh The other types of catheters would would actually melt. So uh patients with dense calcifications because it can disperse the energy patients with anterior tumors because in this case, the energy is being trans through the rectum. So anterior lesions will be far away from the source of energy and therefore, may not be very effective patients, of course, with higher grade tumors. I think these patients will be best served with one of the other, you know, uh conventional treatments, surgery or radiation at Throssell Park. Uh We believe in uh we believe in patient centered care. We always put the patient first. So we have extensive experience in uh diagnosing and treating, treating cancer. The robotic surgery, radiation dedicated radiologist, genital urinary pathologist. We have the dedicated team that only focuses on prostate cancer. We work very closely with our partners in the community including primary care physicians, uh general urologists as well to provide the best possible care for our patients
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