Cryotherapy in treating Prostate Cancer

by Oliver Moras

Cryotherapy is a local treatment used to treat cancers such as prostate cancer. With prostate cancer, thin needles are placed directly into the prostate which have argon gas and helium gas passed through them in order to kill the cancerous cells by freezing and thawing. A catheter is left in the patient for the next 4-5 days on average. This is as the freezing causes swelling and so the catheters prevent the swelling from causing urethral blockages and other related issues.

There are 2 types of cryotherapy in dealing with prostate cancer, whole-prostate cryotherapy and focal cryotherapy. Whole-prostate cryotherapy targets the treatment towards the whole prostate, both the cancerous tissue and healthy tissue. The major issue of treating the whole prostate is that the risk of receiving side effects is much higher. There is a very large chance of impotence, the inability to achieve an erection, with whole-prostate cryotherapy and there is a possibility of incontinence, loss of bladder control. On the other hand, focal cryotherapy aims the treatment at the specific areas which contain cancerous tissue. Just like with whole-prostate cryotherapy, there are large risks of impotence and incontinence but they are relatively lower; however, this treatment method is fairly new and so long term effects are still largely unknown so it is often not the most reliable option. In addition, there are few well trained experts in this field due to insufficient time having passed for medical practitioners to gain much experience (it is so new in the UK that the most common way to receive it is through entering a clinic trial). It is because of a lack of well trained doctors that unskilled doctors are taking on cryotherapy cases while making mistakes such as freezing the bladder or rectum, resulting in further complications.

This treatment is still in development and is not an extremely common choice for patients as alternatives such as radiotherapy techniques like permanent seed brachytherapy have much higher cure rates with much lower risks of serious side effects. Even surgical approaches with high risk rates are more common as many more trained experts are available and these procedures have been proven to be effective and reliable after decades of practice.