Will I continue to urinate normally after my HIFU treatment?

Not in the few days immediately after the treatment when you will need to keep a probe to urinate; however, by the end of the second week when you go to urinate you will have conditions close to those you enjoyed before, or even better if you were suffering at the same time from prostate hypertrophy.

Can you guarantee that I will keep the same normal sexual functions?

No. The nerves which control the male erection reflex run along the prostate. In addition, they are almost invisible on the ultrasound images provided by the device. This sometimes leads to lesions on these nerves when the prostate is treated (whichever treatment is selected). But surgeons know where they are going and take more and more care to ensure that you do not have any lesions, especially if you have clearly expressed your desire to maintain your sexual functions as much as possible. Nevertheless, this preservation is simpler with Ablatherm HIFU thanks to its high performance electronic planning system based on very high resolution images.

What happens if the cancer is not destroyed after the first treatment?

One of the main advantages of the Ablatherm HIFU technique is that one failure is not a therapeutic dead end. In other words, the treatment may be repeated as many times as necessary without risk to the patient, which is not the case for other techniques. On average, around 20% of patients will need a second treatment. If the first treatment fails, which most of the time means that a small portion of cancerous tissue escaped the first treatment, a new session is carried out; this session is quicker since the prostate tissue was already partially destroyed during the previous session.

What are the risks to patients treated by Ablatherm HIFU?

There will always be a certain amount of risk for patients who are treated for prostate cancer, whichever treatment method is chosen. It is a very serious pathology and most of the time treatment is heavy and complex, in particular radiation or surgery. Ablatherm HIFU significantly reduces the level of post-treatment risk and noticeably improves the quality of life of patients who are treated with it. Nevertheless, a certain amount of risk remains, as in any other therapy for the same types of illness. The risk, and the one which is highest on the scale of gravity is the risk of rectal (or digestive) lesions. The most recent results published show that these are lower than 1%. Next there is urinary incontinence. One year after treatment, the estimate is at 0% for severe incontinence, 1.4% for medium incontinence and 6% for light incontinence. These figures must be compared with those of other treatments, notably radiotherapy, where the rate of incontinence varies from 1 to over 20%. The risk of impotence must also be taken into consideration. After HIFU treatment it may vary according to the technique used. The urologist may try to perform a "conservative" treatment (reducing the risk of nerve damage, but increasing the probability of having to use a new treatment). So, with Ablatherm HIFU there is a 50% risk that your sexual functions will deteriorate with standard treatment or around 35% with a conservative treatment (which makes it more favourable than other treatments). The other undesirable effects are less serious (discomfort, more rarely pain, infections, urinary retention, etc.) and recede in most cases with appropriate medical treatment.

Is Ablatherm HIFU still an experimental technique?

Ablatherm HIFU is a device which obtained CE marking in 2000. For a medical device, the CE marking is the equivalent of a marketing authorisation for medicine. Therefore, this device has proved its effectiveness and its tolerance, supported by clinical studies and its case has been accepted by the relevant European health authorities. The manufacturer is therefore authorised to sell it in all the member countries of the European Union and in countries which accept the equivalence of CE marking in their national regulations. This device is therefore not experimental. The necessary clinical experimentation phase was completed in the year 2000 and, given the results, enabled the manufacturer to obtain the authorisation to market the device. In addition, at the start of 2006 over 9,000 patients have been treated and the follow-up, which now exceeds 10 years, and several scientific publications on the subject of Ablatherm HIFU, enable us to confirm that this treatment is no longer part of the experimental domain. Finally, the new care establishments which are using Ablatherm HIFU are doing so as part of an almost daily routine, which places it far from the experimental context. o Is the Ablatherm HIFU procedure painful?  The treatment itself is not painful as it is carried out under local (epidural) or sometimes general anaesthetic. Pain at the end of the treatment is rare, and most patients feel a slight discomfort which disappears in a few days. In addition, it is easy to understand that because there are absolutely no scars left behind the patient does not suffer any pain due to operation wounds scarring over. Finally, unlike with radiation-based treatments, the patients do not have any painful symptoms comparable to burning.