Ultrasound will dispatch Bond, James Bond, easier
The Dominican Republic is known among tourists for its white sands, magnificent waterfalls, and unusual wildlife. But none of those was the attraction that drew Charles A. Reinwald. He came for a rendezvous with an ultrasound device. Reinwald had aggressive prostate cancer, and he didn’t care for the treatment options available in the United States. So, one day in late June 2004, Reinwald traveled from his home in Tequesta, Fla., to a hospital in the Dominican city of Santiago. There, a Miami-based urologist directed ultrasonic waves at the patient’s cancerous prostate gland.
The Dominican Republic and various other countries, including Canada, England, and Mexico, permit doctors to treat prostate cancer with a technique called high-intensity focused ultrasound, or HIFU. It often avoids the irreversible side effects, including impotence, that can arise during surgery, radiation, and the other treatments available in the United States.
A handful of companies market HIFU devices. Although they vary in design and therapeutic purpose, all the machines rely on the same underlying principle. They focus ultrasound energy at a point several centimeters away from the transducer and destroy tissue there.
The companies, including US HIFU of Charlotte, N.C., which Suarez partially owns, have funded research to test whether the new approach is safer and more effective for a variety of cancers than standard therapies are. Breast, bone, brain, and liver tumors are among those cancers being treated experimentally with HIFU. Investigators also continue to study the efficacy of the technique in women with fibroids. In each case, physicians must place the transducer within a few centimeters of the target.
the Doctors at Stanford mentioned this to me and my parents as a possible option(my care would have been free since it is experimental)…but I was afraid I would become the next Bush, so I said no.
I forwarded this to a friend — who’s was down this street a year ago. He stayed with us whilst trudging through the latest in digitally-controlled radiation therapy.
Worked fine as far as it went; but, followed with intestinal adhesions that were almost fatal. So, we’re doing the 5-year watch on 2 fronts.
I guess the interesting bit is that there are a number of treatments being aggressively pursued. Every little bit helps.