With the approach of the health week of men, it is a good time to encourage open discussions about various health conditions, particularly the health of the prostate.
Driven by shame, erroneous concepts and lack of awareness, diagnostic delays can increase the risk of cancer propagation.
This could measure treatments such as prostatectomies, which involve surgery in the prostate gland.
However, according to Dr. Chris Ogden, a main robotic and urologist surgeon in HCA Healthcare UK, prostatectomies have evolved significantly.
What should men know about the treatment of prostate cancer?
“First of all, I think it is important that men realize that many patients diagnosed with prostate cancer do not need any treatment,” says Odgen. “If they have a low risk disease, the recommendation would simply be active surveillance or monitoring with regular blood analysis and integral magnetic resonances.
“However, if treatment is needed, there are good alternatives to radical prostatectomy in certain men with certain cancers. This includes treatments such as focal therapy that different energy sources use, such as sound waves or high intensity focused ultrasound.”
Although these treatments have “relatively low impact,” he says, are suitable for certain types of cancer.
“When cancer involves both sides of the prostate and is intermediate or high risk, then surgery is highly appropriate. [But] Radical prostatectomy has gone from an open and quite dangerous operation to a much more controlled, low or minimum access treatment in the form of robotic prostatectomy, ”explains Odgen.
What is a robotic prostatectomy?
“A radical robotic prostatectomy is the elimination of the entire prostate with intact seminal vesicles, which is carried out exclusively when significant cancer is involved in more than one prostate area.”
Odgen says that when he started working as a doctor, robotic prostatectomies were not the treatment of choice and were incredibly new.
“Most men were offered open or laparoscopic process. Now, however, robotic surgery has become the gold standard for treatment with hundreds of machines and thousands of surgeons who now perform them,” he says.
Odgen explains that this surgery, which is also offered through the NHS, allows doctors to operate intuitively in small spaces, which means they have the best way to carefully guarantee cancer, while preserving all the delicate structures of the pelvis that are responsible for urinary continence and the male erectile function.
“With this surgery, most men go home the next day after surgery, and after a week they begin to look again at some form of work again. Most men have recovered completely within eight weeks of obtaining this new and improved option,” he says.
“This change should give the vast majority of patients the assurance that there are excellent possible cancer results.”
“You can use a general anesthetic for this procedure,” says Mr. Hasan Qazi, leader of robotic surgery specialized at Nuffield Health Parkside hospital. “In addition, a regional anesthetic can also be used as a spinal block.
“This often results in a minimal postoperative discomfort, with most independent and mobile men at the end of the day of surgery or the next morning. Typically, strong analgesics such as morphine are not required.”
What are the benefits of a robotic prostatectomy?
Qazi says that robotic prostatectomy is a standard gold procedure to treat prostate cancer, in which the prostate gland is eliminated.
“It offers a very high probability of healing completely [the] Cancer, while preserving continence and urinary erections. This is due to a highly magnified view, extremely precise movements and the ability to identify and preserve important internal structures, allowing higher results.
“It is the surgeon who operates the robotic system; the system has no artificial intelligence and cannot act independently.”
What are the largest wrong concepts about prostatectomies?
“The biggest mistake is that it is a very dangerous and bloody operation with a lot of pain and discomfort and interruption in the life of a man,” says Ogden.
“However, we can assure men that we have evolved to offer a safe interruption, often relatively painless and limited to their lives, offering them a cancer -free perspective in the future and bring them to all their normal activities quite quickly.”
Qazi adds: “With robotic procedures, compared to traditional open surgery, recovery is significantly faster.
“When I started my career in urology about 25 years, a prostatectomy took an average of five hours, with the urinary catheter that went for weeks and the recovery took several months. Robotic surgery has transformed this, allowing faster recovery, stages in the hospital shorter and less complications.”
