All men know that prostate cancer surgery can lead to impotence and incontinence and have heard HIFU greatly reduces these problems; men in the UK want to know where to get the best treatment - here are their main options and centres for HIFU treatment.
High intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) in the UK - Background
CANCERactive - and particularly Chris Woollams - has championed this treatment since 7 urologists wrote to Chris to bring it to his attention and ask him to cover it in icon. Having checked it out and written it up in 2004, in a 2005 edition of icon we briefly covered the news of this ’breakthrough’ therapy from English newspapers. Life moves on apace. On March 18th 2005 in an Istanbul conference, the European Association of Urology (EAU) launched a ’club’ of top Urologists across Europe to support and develop this highly promising, non-invasive treatment.
Now here we are 15 years later - successfully used around the world - hardly used in the UK.
HIFU is used in the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Russia, Switzerland and, belatedly, the UK.
The therapy involves the use of High Intensity Focussed Ultrasound (HIFU) and is a version of ablation or ablatherm. You can read all about the way it is used elsewhere on this Website.
Go to: HIFU, Ablation and prostate cancer
"HIFU Technology for the treatment of prostate cancer is very promising, as is demonstrated by the high rate of success that we experienced in Munich", stated Dr Stefan Thuroff of the Krankenhaus Munchen Harlaching. That success is a staggering 87 per cent without relapse at five years.
Another positive of the treatment is that nadir PSA is reached after only 3 months and so success is more quickly established.
FDA approval has been sought and the UK’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) published guidelines on April 1st 2005 for its usage in the UK. However it is still not included in the 2019 NICE approved list of treatments for prostate cancer in the UK - just two are - surgery (including Robotic surgery) and radiotherapy (which is really no alternative to HIFU and can even cause rectal cancer!)
While 63 centres are working with the therapy across Europe, the original centre in the UK was Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport, where work only started in about 2005. The Consultant Urologist was Stephen Brown. At the time, UK 5-year survival rates for prostate cancer were only 44% according to Eurocare - we were way behind Europe.
HIFU Treatment centres, HIFU treatment options
Professor Mark Emberton of UCH, London has led two clinical trials in the UK. You still can contact him at UCH - Contact Professor Emberton
A centre in Southampton to bring ablation and HIFU inexpensively to men in Britain closed down.
The Focal Therapy Clinic has now opened in London - Go to: HIFU Clinic in London
Their phone number is 020 7036 8870.
At CANCERactive we have suggested men go to:
Klinik St Georg in Germany (Dr Douwes) - Go to: Klinik St Georg
Varius Clinic in Germany - although they specialise more in the Nanoknife - Go to: Vitus Germany
Krankenhaus Harlaching Munich - Go to: HIFU at Munich Clinic Harlaching
And to the USA, specifically, one of the top experts in the USA:
Go to: John Jurige in Louisville