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Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
31–40 of 115 posts
Re: Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
#32Sample size n=1, but my dad was on the research or clinical trial of this exact treatment in Sydney, it worked for his prostate cancer, he's still clear from PSA tests (and possibly had biopsy also. No side effects. Previously he'd had the radioactive beads treatment which failed, the only other option was removal. Both these options have potentially unpleasant side effects. Happy to ask him questions if anyone wants…
Could you share the hospital or research facility where this was done?
I believe it was Prof Stricker:
https://www.phillipstricker.com.au/prostate-cancer-treatment....
Re: Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
#33Is there anything about this that is specific to the prostate? Wouldn't this exact same treatment work on other accessible tumors, for example breast or skin?
Irreversible electroporation isn’t that new, it’s being actively used (i.e. not trials) for liver, lung, pancreas and kidney cancers for a few years now.
We use it quite a bit in radiology. Usually faster / easier to use thermal ablation (microwave or cryo these days, used to be radiofrequency more often) but there are cases where it’s not feasible due to heat sinking or other reasons and IRE is an alternative.
Re: Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
#34Sample size n=1, but my dad was on the research or clinical trial of this exact treatment in Sydney, it worked for his prostate cancer, he's still clear from PSA tests (and possibly had biopsy also. No side effects. Previously he'd had the radioactive beads treatment which failed, the only other option was removal. Both these options have potentially unpleasant side effects. Happy to ask him questions if anyone wants…
How does it go? Was he put to sleep? What was the prep like leading up to it? What was the recovery like? Did he have to take any drugs?
https://www.phillipstricker.com.au/prostate-cancer-treatment....
"After a full workup to ensure that our patients are suitable for the program they then undergo a day surgery procedure which takes between 40 and 60 minutes. Depending on the extent of the cancer this may simply ablate the lesion, a quarter of the prostate or a half of the prostate. No prostate cancer cells are resistant to this treatment. Large areas can be treated with minimal side effects.
After the treatment patients stay in the day surgery unit for two to four hours and they are discharged home with a Foley catheter in place. Postoperatively pain is minimal and patients are discharged with tablets for mild pain, moderate pain, bladder spasms and relaxation of the prostate and antibiotics as required.
On day 2 a limited multiparametric MRI is performed. The Foley catheter is left in for two to five days depending on the extent of the treatment."
I'll ask him about prep / recovery
Re: Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
#35Only initial cancer or mets as well? When can this be realistically tested on real humans? How long? I have a close relative with potential biochemical recurrence. Could this save him?
Re: Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
#36Re: Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
#37Electrical pulse ablation technology has been around a while, with multiple studies performed and a large body of patents. The promise and hope for the technology is that is causes cell apoptosis, and early rat studies showed electrical ablation shrinking tumors. The goal was/is to apply it to multiple cancer types. Source: I helped with one of the pioneering companies in the field.
A quick internet search for "electrical ablation cell apoptosis cancer" yields a few research articles. For example https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fonc.2020.01235...
Re: Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
#38First time it really hits home how large the risk is. 1/6 is a rather large risk.
It's more likely that you die with prostate cancer than because of prostate cancer. Yes, cancer is never good but for most men prostate cancer develops late and is usually growing very slowly and doesn't spread.
Currently, but as lifespans increase…
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/good-news-and-bad-news-kid...
Re: Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
#39[flagged]
No it wouldn't, it just adds to the repertoire of available treatments.
Re: Prostate cancer could be treated by destroying tumors with electric currents
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a doctor, but my understanding has been that we all have cancer cells at any given point in time. Consider how many cells inside you are undergoing cell division; errors in cell division are where cancer cells come from. The question is whether your body sees and kills the cancer cells; most of the time it does, which is why most of us can live pleasantly for most of our lives despite errors cropping up silen…
This is my understanding as well and my favorite protein, p53 [1], is responsible for hunting down cancerous cells. From what I remember reading in Robins Basic Pathology, it takes many steps for a cell to evolve into cancer and our body has ways to reduce the probability at each step. The most fascinating topic to me is how someone's lifestyle and environment affect their body's natural cancer defence mechanisms. We…
Elephants have 100x as many cells as a human does, live about as long, but have about 1/2 the chance of dying of cancer. Why? A big part is that each elephant cell has ~40 copies of the p53 gene.