I’m not understanding something in a letter from a consultant oncologist

Good Morning Andy (Andy B24) 

I have read that a few times and remember I am not medically trained - but have been around a while and married to a nurse for 45 yeas!!

"Local Ablative Treatment "(LAT) to me refers to a medical treatment to a specific tumour using a heat source such as radiotherapy. To me it sounds like he isn't in favour of you being "zapped" as the Radiotherapy would cause more damage to the unaffected cells which don't contain cancer.

My honest answer though is telephone the oncologist and ask him to tell you what he means in understandable English!!

Please do let us know what it does mean - I am now interested.

Best wishes - Brian.

Hello Andy B24 . My understanding of ablative treatment is that it is a focal therapy targeting just the cancer cells in order to try and reduce collateral damage.

Cryotherapy, HIFU, and Other Ablative Treatments for Prostate Cancer. Ablative treatments use extreme heat or cold or other methods to destroy (ablate) prostate tissue, rather than removing it with surgery or treating it with radiation.

This link gives a more in depth explanation of the different types of ablative treatment.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8057362/

The experts should be able to explain more fully what they mean but come back to us when you get an answer from them.

Just to add - focal Brachytherapy is an ablative treatment.

Thank you for the replies everyone.

I did ask about HIFU in my discussion with the oncologist, so I’m fairly certain that this is what he is talking about.

What I don’t understand his comment about ‘the amount of tissue spare could be achieved’. Is he saying that because of the amount of cancer in the left lobe (10 cores out of the 20 cores taken), that he wouldn’t recommend HIFU because this would only leave a small amount of good (non cancerous) tissue in the left lobe?

I think you are right but why this is a problem needs an expert to explain. Techniques like Brachytherapy can treat the whole lobe and could be an option for you?

Hi Andy

Just looks a normal non aggressive local PC to me although obviously am no expert.

Similar to me actually, I had at least two lesions 13mm and a slightly smaller one and I think a third lurking in the background.

I had RT in 2017 to the whole gland, all ok, not quite sure what exactly he is offering, u need to check that out 

Best wishes 

Steve 

Thank you for the reply

Hi Andy, ablative treatments for PCa, are minimally invasive treatments used to minimise damage to healthy cells, a treatment option between AS and HT/RT or surgery, HIFU, Brachytherapy and focal Brachytherapy being the ones we are most familiar with, along with SABR, Nanoknife and cryotherapy, with a handful of others just becoming an option, as they haven't been around a long time, long term outcomes have yet to be consolidated, though early studies are very encouraging, I would ask my team, why I wasn't considered,

Eddie