Between the
seventeen and eighteen hundreds, Jean
Petit (Paris) and
Benjamin Bell (Edinburgh) were the first surgeons to
remove the lymph nodes, breast tissue and chest muscle in an
effort to save patients from breast carcinoma
"In
the current PSA era, there has been a dramatic increase in the diagnosis
of early localized prostate cancer. These patients pose a challenge in
terms of treatment decisions, as radical treatment is often considered as
over treatment and active surveillance of these cases could yield poor
oncological outcomes. Focal therapy provides afine balance between these two options, as it aims to target the
cancerous foci only without involving the surrounding normal tissue hence
reducing morbidity. The results of our study suggested that among the
patients who were subjected to radical prostatectomy, over 50%would have been potential candidates for focal therapy and could
have avoided the complications of surgery. Focal therapy remains an area
of growing interest, yet at the same time a subject of criticism, as it
can potentially undertreat the disease. We await results of prospective
clinical trials to assess the long-term oncological and functional
efficacy of this treatment option" (Comment
on: Aslam
MZ et al.: "Focal therapy is an option for the majority of
localised prostate cancers: A histopathological study of
contemporary UK radical prostatectomies", Br J Med Surg
Oncol. 2010, doi:10.1016/j.bjmsu.2010.08.003)
