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I am looking for information on alternatives to surgery or radiation.
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: 8 hours ago | Replies (7)Comment receiving replies
@jeffmarc do they ever use Tulsa or IRE to ablate the whole prostate, minus nerve bundles and margins of course, but to basically ablate the whole thing? Thank you.
Replies to "@jeffmarc do they ever use Tulsa or IRE to ablate the whole prostate, minus nerve bundles..."
@bobgolf
Here’s some more information on how IRE is used.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6464181/
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@bobgolf Hi. IRE is truly focal --best candidate is favourable 3+4 intermediate with one visible tumour limited to one side of the prostate. I read that they will sometimes target a second on the other side. It's about "visible" tumour though.
By contrast, Tulsa Pro can be partial ablation but mostly whole gland (aka "subtotal") in that they spare critical structures (ie nerve bundles). The procedure can even go over the tumour (index lesion) twice to "kill it dead" so to speak.
Whole gland Tulsa Pro ablation is about 90%. And it's that 10% spared for critical structures' tissue that you ---wonder about....
To be fair, if you're doing IRE and have (say) just an index tumour zapped with 1/2 to 3/4+ of the prostate left untreated there's a lot more "wonder about".
Cheers.