New treatment for prostate cancer gives 'perfect results' for nine in ten men: research

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence will say in new guidance next week that the treatment is safe and effective and larger scale trials should go ahead.

A larger trial is already recruiting patients and men interested in the treatment should speak to their cancer doctor or GP about being referrred, experts said.

Prostate cancer is the commonest cancer in men with more than 37,000 diagnoses each year approximately 10,000 deaths.

Current treatments include surgery to remove the whole prostate or radiotherapy. Both of which can effectively treat the cancer but often cause side effects such as incontinence and impotence.

However in many men prostate cancer will not progress to a life threatening disease meaning that radical treatment risks side effects unnecessarily. For this reason, research is now focused on reducing side effects.

Focal HIFU involves careful selection of tumours, as small as a grain of rice, within the prostate gland and targeting them with highly focused ultrasound to heat them and destroy them.

The advantage over previous HIFU and other treatments is that damage to surrounding tissue is minimised, meaning there are far fewer side effects.

In the study published in the journal Lancet Oncology, 41 men were treated with focal HIFU. After 12 months, none were incontinent and one in ten suffered impotence.

The majority, 95 per cent, were free of cancer after 12 months.

Dr Hashim Ahmed, who led the study at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust andUniversity College London, said: “This changes the paradigm. By focusing just on the areas of cancer we reduce the collateral damage to surrounding tissue.

"Our results are very encouraging. We’re optimistic that men diagnosed with prostate cancer may soon be able to undergo a day case surgical procedure, which can be safely repeated once or twice, to treat their condition with very few side-effects. That could mean a significant improvement in their quality of life.

“This study provides the proof-of-concept we need to develop a much larger trial to look at whether focal therapy is as effective as the current standard treatment in protecting the health of the men treated for prostate cancer in the medium and long term.”

He said after Nice guidance is issued next week, he expected other doctors to consider using the treatment.

He said: "These results will encourage more physicians to look at it more carefully.

"If men are interested in this concept they should speak to their cancer doctror or their GP.

"The next step is a large scale randomised controlled trial. This needs to be evaluated in a timly way so men can benefit."

The research programme is led by Professor Mark Emberton, of UCL and UCLH. He said: “Focal therapy offers harm reduction – it is a strategy that attempts to redress the balance of harms and benefits by offering men who place high utility on genito-urinary function an alternative to standard care.

"In fact, the concept is not new - tissue preserving strategies have been used successfully in all other solid organ cancers such as breast cancer by offering women a lumpectomy rather than mastectomy.”