The aging male population in Singapore has four times more prone to prostate cancer than it was 30 years back.
Prevailing treatment options include only surgical removal of the prostate gland and radiation therapy. The aforementioned treatments, however, have side effects.
Recently, Singaporean doctors have developed a non-invasive treatment for prostate cancer patients that reduce the side effects and importantly shorten its treatment time.
The Singapore General Hospital and the National Cancer Center Singapore last August, have conducted a trial involving seven patients with low risk prostate cancer who participated, the initial outcome have shown that the non-invasive ultrasound treatment resulted to few complications.
The new approach allows patients to continue their activities just a few days after treatment as compared to about two weeks if their prostate gland removed.
In the new treatment approach, Singaporean doctors have just focused in applying high levels of heat on the tumor without affecting the surrounding tissue.
“When we treat, we are treating only the part of the gland with the cancer as opposed to the conventional treating methods like surgery or radical prostatectomy where the patients undergo surgery to remove the whole gland and those are associated with increased incidence of incontinence and impotence,” said Kwek Jin Wei, senior consultant radiologist for National Cancer Center Singapore.
