Promoting prostate health

Highlighting the efforts of our 50+ urology team

November is approaching, along with it, Movember, the month we raise awareness of men’s health issues, including prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men aside from skin cancer and will affect approximately one in eight men during their lifetime. Age increases the chances of the cancer; about 60% of prostate cancers are diagnosed in men who are 65 or older, according to the American Cancer Society.

I share these statistics not to worry anyone; and in fact, if caught early, prostate cancer is very treatable. Instead, I want to highlight the efforts of our 50+ urology team of doctors, surgeons, oncologists and researchers who provide world-class innovative urology care to some 40,000 patients across the health system and offer a wide range of options for treating prostate cancer.

One new treatment for cancer is focal therapy, which eliminates only the part of the prostate that contains the cancer cells rather than removing the entire prostate. This approach minimizes the common side effects of surgery, which may include incontinence or impotence, while controlling the cancer. Focal therapy can be likened to a lumpectomy for those with breast cancer, taking only part of the breast rather than the entire breast, therefore minimizing the side effects of a more radical surgery.

This technique has been made possible by recent advances and innovations in prostate cancer imaging and surgical technologies that allow our surgeons to more precisely detect — and target — the location of the cancer. 

One focal therapy option is cryoablation, which targets and destroys prostate cancer cells using very cold temperatures. We were also among the first academic medical centers in the country to use a high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) ablation that uses heat to destroy tumors. More recently, we are also offering irreversible electroporation (IRE), which removes cancer with short electrical pulses as another focal therapy option.

Looking to the future, our clinicians are investigating two more minimally invasive types of treatments. Urologists Dr. Mihir Desai and Dr. Inderbir Gill recently completed a phase one clinical trial investigating the use of Aquablation®, a robotically controlled high-pressure waterjet to remove cancer cells, with plans for possible future studies. Our doctors have already used this technique to successfully remove excess prostate tissue from men with an enlarged prostate gland or benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which is the most common prostate problem for men over 50.

Dr. Andre Abreu, the director of image-guided surgery, focal therapy and artificial intelligence for prostate cancer for Keck Medicine of USC, is the site leader of a multi-institutional phase 2 clinical trial studying the efficacy of steam vapor to destroy prostate tumors. The treatment is performed as an outpatient procedure and does not involve radiation or traditional surgery. Further down the road, our team is investigating the use of artificial intelligence as an even more powerful tool to locate, map and visualize prostate cancer, resulting in more precise surgery and quicker recoveries.

Before I finish, I want to quickly talk about prevention. Our urologists recommend all men 50 or older discuss being screened for prostate cancer with their health care provider. Screenings are relatively non-invasive, consisting of a blood test and a physical exam, and they are the main way of detecting early – and usually curable — prostate cancer.

I want to thank our outstanding and innovative urology team who offer comprehensive prostate care not only during Movember but all year round.

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