IRE Nanoknife diary.

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Hi Folks

New here as a member, but have been watching the forums for a couple of years.

One thing I struggled to find when doing my research was real life experience of people doing IRE (Nanoknife), and their experiences - these things are a good comfort read and help balance the keenness or otherwise of specialists to recommend this new focal treatment protocol.

As I'm now an IRE'ee as of this morning, I'm going to write up here my experience for others in the future to look at or ask questions. I am an advocate of new stuff, especially things that do the least harm possible - and when dealing with prostate and all it entails, this is super important in the face of much more invasive and sledgehammer treatments that cause life changing side effects. If you're a candidate for IRE, I hope it helps.

It's day 1, had the treatment this morning at St Vincents in Sydney by highly regarded Phillip Stricker (who works closely with Emberton in the UK). Super easy, go in - get knocked out, wake up with a foley catheter and get taken home by a mate who loves the banter about your new appendage. Little discomfort from the tubing, but given light painkillers and anti-inflammatories to deal with that, which they do well. There's also antibiotics to take and things to make passing urine easier when the catheter comes out in a couple of days before the 'what did we zap' MRI. Otherwise, feeling totally normal, no fuss at all.

I umm'd and arrr'd for over a year on getting this done, as it's 'only' a GL6, but it can be felt with DRE, it's on the edge, and I have a brother who has more extensive grade, so risk for future is perhaps higher. My main concern is/was side effects as I'm relatively young, in-particular ED.

Having a small single lesion confirmed by MRI, PET and biopsy with just one positive core gave weight to IRE, and other *potential yet to be confirmed* implications of IRE like immune response for the future on these cells, and of course zapping the lead guy in my cancer army.

I'll update as days go on.

Millibob 10 months ago

G'Day wazz123 A warm welcome to the online Community.

Many thanks for charting your experiences with Nanoknife - we don't get many on here so it's a great help. I see you have put a few details on your profile - could I ask that you update that please - it's always there where as this thread may well go down the list of active threads. Thanks.

I look forward to reading your progress and once again welcome and thank you for posting.

Best wishes - Brian.

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wazz123 10 months ago

Small update from Day 3, catheter out today with no complications or need for pads etc. Had an MRI to check they zapped the right section and encompassed the area of concern, will find out about that next week but likely to be okay. ED doesn't seem to be an issue judging by nocturnal happenings, which with a catheter in is a whole new level of shock to wake up to.

Small bit of blood in fluids here and there (but nothing on the horror movie scale of the biopsy), but that's to expected and am not overly concerned about that at all.

Thus far, a +1 for IRE if it's an option.

---------------------------------

50 Years old.

Grade I, GL6 found Aug-2021, PSA: 2.2 palpable by physical digital exam.

Treated single lesion with IRE, 22/11/2023
Catheter removed 24/11/2023, no leakage or ED issues

06/01/2024 Blood in semen and urine now stopped. Everything a-ok and as before op.

wazz123 8 months ago

Another update - apologies for the delay.

Since the op, nothing was really to note except blood in the semen and occasionally blood from penis when dropping the kids off at the pool! (For any non-UK folk, not literally dropping the kids off at the pool :-) ).

This did start to worry me after a few weeks, but reassured by the urologist that it's completely normal and can last up to 6 weeks.

Sure enough, pretty much at the 6 week mark it all stopped and everything back to normal.

So now, I'm happy to report that literally everything is as it was prior to the IRE. I'm still waiting for a few more months before the first post-op PSA test, but I'd be gob-smacked if that didn't drop down. I will update on that when it's done.

There's one last thing that may occur, but after 6 weeks it's looking okay. And that's reduced semen, or even retrograde... this is apparently possible due to scar tissue from the IRE pulling on the various tubes for that, but even in bigger IRE procedures the risk is 20% or so, so I'm hopeful that too will continue to be fine.