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| Duke Hosts International Conference Focused on New Treatment for Prostate and Kidney Cancers |
Prostate and kidney cancer specialists from around the world traveled to Washington, D.C. in February to attend a conference hosted by the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center which focused on an emerging technique used to treat prostate cancer and kidney cancer. The technique, called focal therapy, has fewer side effects than traditional treatments for both diseases.
Urologist Thomas Polascik, MD, associate professor of surgery at Duke University Medical Center, chaired the Third International Symposium on Focal Therapy and Imaging of Prostate and Kidney Cancer, which also featured Duke prostate cancer specialists Vladimir Mouraviev, MD, PhD; Daniel George, MD; David Albala, MD; and Cary Robertson, MD.
The Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center hosted the First International Symposium on Focal Therapy in 2008, which was also chaired by Polascik. Duke will co-sponsor the 2011 focal therapy symposium in Amsterdam.
Although currently there are a number of viable treatment options for patients with prostate cancer including surgery, radiation, and hormone therapy, these treatments target the entire prostate and can result in urinary incontinence or loss of potency in men. Focal therapy targets only the known cancer in the prostate, so patients have a lower risk of side effects. Focal therapy may be appropriate for approximately one in five men with prostate cancer since the disease must be localized to one part of the prostate. The technique has also increasingly been used to treat kidney cancer.
"One of the benefits of focal therapy is that it can be repeated," says Polascik, who specializes in focal therapy. "And what may happen in the future is we may transform prostate cancer into a chronic disease. In other words, if a patient is treated and then has a recurrence many years down the road, that treatment can be repeated."
After focal therapy, a patient's physician will continue to biopsy the prostate to make sure untreated areas remain cancer free. So far, 98 percent of patients maintained continence while up to 90 percent maintained potency.
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