The American Cancer Society’s prostate cancer estimates for 2017 are in and they’re not exactly brimming with good news.
About 161,360 new cases of the disease, says the ACA, will be diagnosed this calendar year and nearly 27,000 American men will likely die from it.
Roughly one in every seven men in this country will be diagnosed with this particular form of cancer during their lifetimes, and six in every 10 of those will be age 65 or older.
Prostate cancer remains the third-leading cause of cancer death in American men behind only lung cancer and colorectal cancer.
Dr. Joseph Crawford of Advanced Urology Associates of Florida here in Vero Beach is taking on this deadly disease with a newly FDA-approved procedure known as “high intensity focused ultrasound,” or HIFU.
Despite Crawford’s enthusiasm about the procedure, however, HIFU is not universally embraced by his colleagues in the medical community.
The Journal of the American Medical Association or JAMA questions whether HIFU is actually an innovative approach to treating prostate cancer. It calls the procedure a “novelty” and goes on to point out that HIFU “failed to gain FDA approval twice in the past 3 years.”
On its third try HIFU did get its nod from the FDA but, according to medscape.com, that approval was “simply for prostate ablation,” which in layman’s terms means it’s approved for the destruction of prostate tissue.
JAMA, meanwhile, claims this ultrasound procedure failed in its first two attempts at garnering an FDA greenlight because of “the inability of HIFU to demonstrate efficacy or direct patient benefit.”
Crawford brushes aside HIFU’s various naysayers by stating, “We are able to combine great imaging with wonderful radiologic interpretation. We feel very comfortable saying … yes we can treat you; yes we can minimize the side effects; and yes we can keep your quality of life good – and there is a great chance we can cure your prostate cancer.”
More mainstream prostate cancer treatment options, including traditional surgery, robotic surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and cryotherapy, or the freezing of the prostate, have had years of impressive documented success in beating this disease.
Fox Health News, for example, points to what it calls “a 99 percent five-year survival rate in current prostate cancer treatments.”
That sets an incredibly high bar for HIFU to reach just to be competitive.
Moreover, says Fox, “Patients with enlarged prostates are not considered eligible for HIFU treatment.”
The Harvard Medical School, meanwhile, points out that during its clinical trials “nearly one in three prostates treated with HIFU tested positive for cancer in biopsies taken two years after treatment.”
Nonetheless, this newly approved ultrasound treatment is now available here on the Treasure Coast and Crawford is one of its biggest proponents.
“Most individuals” with prostate cancer, says the gregarious Crawford, “want three things.
“They want to have no cancer; they want to be dry and not have any problems with leakage or incontinence; and they want to be potent. If they’re getting good erections now they want to have good erections after they’re treated [and] HIFU gives us the best options with regards to doing that.”
On an encouraging note, Fox Health does say “current research suggests that older patients who cannot tolerate surgery or patients diagnosed at the earliest stages of the prostate cancer should be asked if they prefer HIFU as an option.”
Patients facing a prostate cancer diagnosis should consult their primary care physician or their urologist to make the best, most informed choice for their own treatment options.
Dr. Joseph Crawford is with Advanced Urology Associates of Florida at 1986 35th Avenue in Vero Beach. The phone number is 772-562-9339.
