Your sitemaster is pleased to be able to report a forthright and interesting discussion yesterday with Dr. Stephen Scionti about the current and future potential of high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) in the treatment of prostate cancer. The full content of the hour-long teleconference can be listened to if you click here.
Some of the critical points made by Dr. Scionti on this teleconference, that are of great importance to anyone considering HIFU as a possible treatment for prostate cancer at this time, are the following:
- He considers that, at present, HIFU is most appropriately used to treat men with truly organ-confined, localized prostate cancer who are not good candidates for active surveillance.
- He is very clear that “HIFU is not for everyone.”
- He believes it is important to use advanced diagnostic techniques such as multiparametric MRI scans and MRI/TRUS fusion-guided biopsies to provide as much information about a patient’s cancer as possible in making any determination of whether a specific patient is a good candidate for treatment with HIFU (or any other appropriate form of therapy).
- There are currently limited data available on the long-term outcomes of men treated using the current generations of HIFU technology, and one or more registry initiatives are being evaluated to address this issue here in the USA.
- The ability to treat men well using HIFU is very definitely affected by the levels of skill and experience of the treating physician and his support team and by the selection of appropriate patients who are good candidates for HIFU.
- Healthcare insurance coverage for treatment of prostate cancer with HIFU will take time to address. Early candidates for HIFU here in the USA may need to appeal initial denials of coverage in order to get coverage for this type of treatment.
The teleconference with Dr. Scionti covered a wide range of issues that are important to the approval of HIFU, the different types of HIFU technology that are likely to be available to clinicians within the next 6 months or so, and the identification and pre-treatment evaluation of patients who are actually good candidates for treatment with this technique.
We encourage any prostate cancer patient who is interested in considering HIFU as a possible treatment option to spend an hour listening to this teleconference to help them in making an initial decision as to whether they want to explore this opportunity further.
Filed under: Diagnosis, Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Risk, Treatment | Tagged: CureTalk, focused, HIFU, high-intensity, Scionti, ultrasound |
THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK 
The link to listen doesn’t seem to work.
Dear PV Lady:
I just checked both of the links to the CureTalks web site and they were working just fine for me.
When you get to the CureTalks web site, you do need to scroll down and click on the little orange triangle to actually start the audio program.