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A Prostate Test That's Not Fickle

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  • Norbert, Did you know one in nine men in the US will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime? Yeah, it's actually the second leading cause of cancer death in men behind lung cancer.

    But most men don't actually die from it because it's often a slow growing cancer. That's true, but the five year survival rate depends on what type you get and whether it has spread to distant sites. And in thirty percent of cases, they do.

    To prevent that from happening, men have many treatment options that also carry significant risks of side effects such as erectile dysfunction and incontinence. A new treatment not only avoids those issues but appears effective in treating the cancer.

    It's called TULSA which stands for magnetic resonance-guided transurethral ultrasound ablation. It maps the prostate to see the cancer using real-time MRI and a robot driven ultrasound through the penis and into the urethra. The urethra is a tube that carries semen and urine. Then TULSA uses ultrasound again to destroy cancerous tissue inside the prostate.

    A temperature sensor is able to control the intensity and rotation rate of the ultrasound so that it spares nerves while clearing cancer cells. A five country study involving one hundred fifteen men found nearly all had over ninety percent of their prostate eliminated within just fifty minutes compared to hours-long operations.

    One year after surgery, sixty percent of the men were cancer free. The prostate becomes unnecessary once a man no longer wants to have children, so one researcher says the magic pill would be to get rid of it entirely and avoid the many problems it causes.

    Maybe one day, that will be an option.

More Information

A four-group urine risk classifier for predicting outcomes in patients with prostate cancer
Urine-derived EV-RNA can provide diagnostic information on aggressive prostate cancer prior to biopsy, and prognostic information for men on AS. PUR represents a new and versatile biomarker that could result in substantial alterations to current treatment of patients with prostate cancer...

Simple prostate cancer test could diagnose five years early and prevent thousands of invasive operations
A simple urine test could detect aggressive prostate cancer five years before treatment is needed and save thousands of men from invasive surgery...

Can Prostate Cancer Be Found Early?
Screening is testing to find cancer in people before they have symptoms. For some types of cancer, screening can help find cancers at an early stage, when they are likely to be easier to treat...

Prostate cancer urine test shows who needs treatment and when
Researchers at the University of East Anglia and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital have developed a urine test to diagnose aggressive prostate cancer and predict whether patients will require treatment up to five years earlier than standard clinical methods...

National Cancer Institute Cancer Stat Facts: Prostate Cancer

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