Good question! If you Google the term “minimally invasive” in relation to any medical treatment, it is likely that you will get a wide range of procedures that claim to fall under this category.
In the simplest terms (as defined by Dictionary.com) minimally invasive is a treatment that requires only a small incision or the insertion of an instrument into a body cavity involving minimal damage to body tissues.
Advances in medicine have caused the terminology to evolve. In a 2004 article in the journal Urology, minimally invasive treatments for patients with localized prostate cancer included:
Since then, the following have been added to the list:
Here is a list of minimally invasive prostate cancer therapies and which patients might consider them according to Prostate.net and the American Cancer Society.
While each of these procedures can classify themselves as minimally invasive, they each have different qualifiers, and some of these procedures are less invasive than others.
Where does HIFU fall in the spectrum of minimally invasive?
A HIFU prostate ablation requires no piercing* of the skin and no damage to intervening tissue between the medical device and the targeted organ tissue. It seems too good to be true, but the medical instrument is simply inserted into a natural body cavity (the rectum) and energy is transmitted through the rectal wall and focused on targeted prostate tissue. The energy heats the precisely targeted prostate tissue until the temperature is too high for the cells to survive.
Learn more about how a prostate HIFU procedure works >>
HIFU Benefits
Because of the nature of the procedure, a minimally invasive prostate HIFU procedure offers the following benefits to patients:
*a HIFU procedure may or may not utilize a suprapubic catheter. In this case, an incision would need to be made for the catheter, but no incisions are needed for the delivery of HIFU therapy.