High-intensity focused ultrasound for prostate cancer

ABSTRACT

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a noninvasive procedure that has shown promising results in a wide range of malignant and nonmalignant conditions, including localized prostate cancer (PCa). This review aims to describe the application of HIFU in the management of patients with PCa, explaining its basic therapeutic principles, going through the main phases during aHIFU session, and providing an overview of the main available pieces of evidence from literature. HIFU treatment for prostate cancer is increasingly performed with high success and safety. MR guidance (MR-guided HIFU) has the advantage of real-time intraprocedural thermometric feedback that ensures that the whole region of interest has been covered by critical thermal damage (and that all surrounding healthy tissues have been spared). The absence of comparative long-term trials prevents HIFU from being considered as afirst choice for the treatment of patients with PCa.

KEYWORDS:

• Prostate cancer
• high-intensity focus ultrasound
• HIFU
• focal therapy
• noninvasive treatment

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.