Study: New Prostate Cancer Surgery Technique Is More Risky
Posted by admin - 16/10/09 at 09:10 am
The risk of losing sexual function and urine control may be greater in men who have prostate cancer surgery designed to reduce blood loss and hospital stays than those having traditional operations, a Harvard researcher reported Tuesday.
The technique, in which surgeons make three or four small cuts in the abdomen, is used in 40% of procedures to remove the prostate. Men undergoing the surgery were 40% more likely to be impotent and 30% more likely to be incontinent, according to the findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A leading Detroit urologist who was a pioneer in the technique disagreed with the study’s conclusions.
The newer surgery, replacing the need for a large abdominal incision, was introduced in 2001.
The research was led by Dr. Jim Hu, a urologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The Defense Department funded the work.
“This is not what we see in Detroit,” said Dr. Mani Menon, director of the Vattikuti Urology Institute at Henry Ford Hospital and one of the pioneers of robotic prostate cancer surgery.
Menon’s data on 4,800 robot prostate cancer procedures between 2000 and 2009 show that the complication rates are half of those reported in the national study. “To me, it means too many people are taking a two-day course” and then start “doing the operation,” he said.
Ford doctors train with senior physicians for a year before doing the surgery, he said.
Menon also pointed out that the study was conducted among Medicare recipients only. His data include men of all ages. And although he hasn’t studied older men only, he suspects that their complication rates would be lower if they go to an experienced robotic surgeon.
Prostate cancer is expected to be the most common malignancy in U.S. men this year, with 192,280 new cases, according to the American Cancer Society. The disease is the second-highest killer among cancers with 27,360 deaths.
